Kanton Jura


Located at the northwestern border of Switzerland, towards France, the canton of Jura is the Swiss part of the region Jura. This limestone ridge gave its name to the rocks and the era in which they were formed, the Jurassic. Jurassic limestones were folded by the forces from the Alpine orogeny, by too far away the force was not big enough to produce high peaks. The result are valleys and ridges formed by the undulating limestone layers.

The canton of Jura is a rather small canton, the Capital is Delémont, the people speak French. The montaineous part has always been rather poor, as it is not very fertile, and there are no natural sources. So the people had to develop something else, wher no natural resources were needed. Many centuries ago they started to build watches, and started an important and world famous watch making tradition. In times of fast changing fashion, there are still some manufacturers of extremely expensive mechanical watches, and also the Swatch company, which follows fashion with cheap, colourful and high quality quartz watches.