The Swiss communities are so colorful (or not)

To begin with, let’s take a sober look at the number of coats of arms in which a certain color appears. Eleven different (basic) colors have found their way into at least one Swiss city coat of arms.

Only 19 survive without black. However, black is usually used "only" to delineate the highlight. So we counted black twice. The second time only if black actually covers a certain area, so more than for example (small) eyes or for the details of leaves or the like. The border is not fixed there. In short: If a black in the weapon immediately stands out as a "color", it was also counted as a color.

White is most common, followed by red and yellow. You can see which colors occur in which communities in point 3.

There are no monochromatic municipal coats of arms in Switzerland. The most common are the 2- and 3-color flags.

The municipality of Vaud has the most colorful coat of arms in Switzerland Faug on Lake Murten. It depicts a peacock and a beech tree. The peacock stands for the folk etymological reference to the place name, the beech for the correct derivation of "fagus" (Latin for beech). We count eight different colors here, where we also distinguish between the shades of green and blue:

After all, seven colors point Haute Sorne JU And Bettmeralp USA out. Although the colors are also decisive for the Jura, Bettmeralp's coat of arms consists of seven different colours. The tree stands for the high proportion of forest in the municipality, the fish for the Bettmersee and on the right we see the chapel Maria zum Schnee:

Here you will find the number of colors in the coat of arms per municipality. In each case, we noted whether or not black was counted as a color according to our definition. The darker the municipality, the more colorful the coat of arms:

Let's take a closer look at that. This is how the municipalities are divided on the Swiss map with the corresponding colors. Striking, for example, is the accumulation of black as a color around Appenzell/St.Gallen and in the Bernese Oberland. These are usually images of animals (often bears or eagles):

Two municipal coats of arms contain pink. Bee Chardonne vd flowering thistles are depicted with them, two of them have goldfinches on them:

The relatively new parish also uses pink Val Mara, was created from a merger of three municipalities in the south of Ticino. It's funny: the three original communities show a donkey (Maroggia), a dormouse (Melano) and a cat (Rovio), all of which are missing from the new coat of arms.

Instead the river and lake are shown, the peony symbolizes Monte Generoso, the three stars represent the three founding communities. A peony does not appear on any other coat of arms, it grows wild in the south of Ticino. Incidentally, the colors are described as «fuchsia» and «purple», neither of which are heraldic colors (see infobox).

Which brings us to the last part. How are the colors on municipal coats of arms usually combined? As can be seen in point 2, most coats of arms are tricolor (821) or bicolor (700).

We'll start with the two-tone: red and white is by far the most common combination (they're also the colors most commonly found in community flags). Only has blue and green Le Paquier FR chosen as his colors, the combinations white/yellow, black/blue and black/green are not found in Switzerland:

And so the two-tone city coat of arms is spread all over Switzerland. Tap or click the desired combination in the legend to see where they are:

There are 15 combinations of the tricolor coat of arms in Switzerland. Usually in the variant red, white, yellow, such as with Thun, Martiny or woman field.

The rarest combination of three colors is red, black, green. Loehningen SH And So grind are the two representatives. Red/black/blue, red/blue/green and black/green/blue did not come together on a municipal coat of arms.

And so the tricolor municipal coat of arms is spread all over Switzerland. Tap or click the desired combination in the legend to see where they are: