Gordevio
Encyclopedia
Gordevio was a municipality
Municipalities of Switzerland
Communes , also known as municipalities, are the smallest government division in Switzerland, numbering 2,596 . While many have a population of a few hundred citizens, the largest cities such as Zürich or Geneva also have the legal status of municipalities...

 in the district of Vallemaggia
Vallemaggia (district)
The district of Vallemaggia is a district of the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. It has a population of . The capital of the district is Cevio.-Geography:...

 in the canton
Cantons of Switzerland
The 26 cantons of Switzerland are the member states of the federal state of Switzerland. Each canton was a fully sovereign state with its own borders, army and currency from the Treaty of Westphalia until the establishment of the Swiss federal state in 1848...

 of Ticino
Ticino
Canton Ticino or Ticino is the southernmost canton of Switzerland. Named after the Ticino river, it is the only canton in which Italian is the sole official language...

 in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. On 20 April 2008, Avegno
Avegno, Switzerland
Avegno was a municipality in the district of Vallemaggia in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. On 20 April 2008, Avegno and Gordevio merged to form Avegno Gordevio....

 and Gordevio merged to form Avegno Gordevio
Avegno Gordevio
Avegno Gordevio is a municipality in the district of Vallemaggia in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. It was formed on 20 April 2008 when Avegno and Gordevio were merged.-History:...

.

History

Gordevio is first mentioned in 1200 as de gordauio. In 1335 it was mentioned as de Gordavio.

The parish church
Parish church
A parish church , in Christianity, is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish, the basic administrative unit of episcopal churches....

 of SS Giacomo e Filippo, is first mentioned in the 13th Century. The current building was built in the 17th Century on the remains of a previous church from the 14th Century. It contains paintings by Giovanni Antonio Vanoni
Giovanni Antonio Vanoni
Giovanni Antonio Vanoni was a Swiss painter.In 1857, Giovanni Antonio Vanoni and Giacomo Antonio Pedrazzi painted the Church of S. Vittore in Muralto.-References:*This article was initially translated from the German Wikipedia....

 (19th Century) and probably by Giuseppe Antonio Felice Orelli, who created fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

es in the adjacent ossuary
Ossuary
An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are frequently used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave, then after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary...

 in 1753. In village of Brièè, in 1666, the chapel of S. Antonio Abate was built. In the 14th Century both Gordevio and Avegno had their own chaplain
Chaplain
Traditionally, a chaplain is a minister in a specialized setting such as a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam or lay representative of a religion attached to a secular institution such as a hospital, prison, military unit, police department, university, or private chapel...

. The two villages broke away from the mother church
Mother Church
In Christianity, the term mother church or Mother Church may have one of the following meanings:# The first mission church in an area, or a pioneer cathedral# A basilica or cathedral# The main chapel of a province of a religious order...

 in Maggia, and parted from each other probably about 1645.

The village center of contains some houses from the 19th Century. Due to lack of farming land, emigration (at first mainly to Rome, but in the second half of the 19th Century overseas as well) lowered the number of inhabitants. In the last decades of the 20th Century, the population has risen again. This increase is mainly due to its proximity to agglomeration of Locarno
Locarno
Locarno is the capital of the Locarno district, located on the northern tip of Lake Maggiore in the Swiss canton of Ticino, close to Ascona at the foot of the Alps. It has a population of about 15,000...

. Agricultural jobs have practically disappeared from the village.

Geography

The village is located in the Vallemaggia district. It consists of two sections, Villa and Brièè, which are separated by the Ri di Gèi stream.

Coat of arms

The blazon
Blazon
In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image...

 of the municipal coat of arms
Coat of arms
A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

 is Per bend gules two fleurs de lis argent and of the last a cross pattee per saltire azure and of the first and overall a bendlet of the third.

Demographics

Gordevio has a population of 812. Most of the population speaks Italian language
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 (675 or 84.6%), with German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 being second most common (80 or 10.0%) and French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 being third (29 or 3.6%). There are 3 people who speak Romansh.

Of the population in the village 305 or about 38.2% were born in Gordevio and lived there in 2000. There were 236 or 29.6% who were born in the same canton, while 115 or 14.4% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 100 or 12.5% were born outside of Switzerland. , there were 346 people who were single and never married in the village. There were 354 married individuals, 58 widows or widowers and 40 individuals who are divorced.

There were 59 households that consist of only one person and 24 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 274 households that answered this question, 21.5% were households made up of just one person and 7 were adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 64 married couples without children, 104 married couples with children There were 26 single parents with a child or children. There were 12 households that were made up unrelated people and 2 households that were made some sort of institution or another collective housing.

there were 260 single family homes (or 78.5% of the total) out of a total of 331 inhabited buildings. There were 64 multi-family buildings (19.3%), along with 4 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (1.2%) and 3 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (0.9%). Of the single family homes 12 were built before 1919, while 10 were built between 1990 and 2000. The greatest number of single family homes (84) were built between 1919 and 1945.

there were 422 apartments in the village. The most common apartment size was 4 rooms of which there were 112. There were 18 single room apartments and 122 apartments with five or more rooms. Of these apartments, a total of 270 apartments (64.0% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 142 apartments (33.6%) were seasonally occupied and 10 apartments (2.4%) were empty.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Politics

In the 2007 federal election
Swiss federal election, 2007
Elections to the Swiss Federal Assembly, the federal parliament of Switzerland, were held on Sunday, 21 October 2007. In a few cantons, a second round of the elections to the Council of States was held on 11 November, 18 November, and 25 November 2007...

 the most popular party was the SP
Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland is the largest centre-left political party in Switzerland....

 which received 27.17% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the CVP
Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland
The Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland is a Christian democratic political party in Switzerland. It is the fourth-largest party in the National Council, with 31 seats, and the largest in the Council of States, with 15 seats. It has one seat, that of Doris Leuthard, on the Swiss...

 (26.51%), the FDP
FDP.The Liberals
FDP.The Liberals is a classical liberal political party in Switzerland. It is the joint-largest party in the Federal Council, third-largest party in the National Council, and second-largest in the Council of States....

 (21.86%) and the Ticino League
Ticino League
The Ticino League is an isolationist, national conservative political party in Switzerland active in the canton of Ticino.In 1991, after some public campaigning in the Sunday journal Mattino della Domenica against political power and use of public money, the editor Giuliano Bignasca and the...

 (13.94%). In the federal election, a total of 262 votes were cast, and the voter turnout
Voter turnout
Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 was 45.5%.

In the Gran Consiglio election, there were a total of 576 registered voters in Gordevio, of which 358 or 62.2% voted. 3 blank ballots were cast, leaving 355 valid ballots in the election. The most popular party was the PS
Social Democratic Party of Switzerland
The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland is the largest centre-left political party in Switzerland....

 which received 88 or 24.8% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were; the PPD
Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland
The Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland is a Christian democratic political party in Switzerland. It is the fourth-largest party in the National Council, with 31 seats, and the largest in the Council of States, with 15 seats. It has one seat, that of Doris Leuthard, on the Swiss...

+GenGiova (with 85 or 23.9%), the SSI (with 73 or 20.6%) and the LEGA
Ticino League
The Ticino League is an isolationist, national conservative political party in Switzerland active in the canton of Ticino.In 1991, after some public campaigning in the Sunday journal Mattino della Domenica against political power and use of public money, the editor Giuliano Bignasca and the...

 (with 44 or 12.4%).

In the Consiglio di Stato election, 4 blank ballots and 1 null ballot were cast, leaving 353 valid ballots in the election. The most popular party was the PS which received 97 or 27.5% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were; the PPD (with 88 or 24.9%), the LEGA (with 73 or 20.7%) and the SSI (with 50 or 14.2%).

Economy

There were 318 residents of the village who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 41.2% of the workforce. , there were 86 workers who commuted into the village and 226 workers who commuted away. The village is a net exporter of workers, with about 2.6 workers leaving the village for every one entering. About 14.0% of the workforce coming into Gordevio are coming from outside Switzerland.

Religion

From the , 632 or 79.2% were Roman Catholic, while 52 or 6.5% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church
Swiss Reformed Church
The Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Bern , St...

. Of the rest of the population, there were 2 members of an Orthodox church
Orthodox Christianity
The term Orthodox Christianity may refer to:* the Eastern Orthodox Church and its various geographical subdivisions...

 (or about 0.25% of the population), and there was 1 individual who belongs to another Christian church. There was 1 individual who was Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic. 80 (or about 10.03% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic
Agnosticism
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....

 or atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, and 30 individuals (or about 3.76% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Gordevio about 313 or (39.2%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 77 or (9.6%) have completed additional higher education (either University or a Fachhochschule
Fachhochschule
A Fachhochschule or University of Applied Sciences is a German type of tertiary education institution, sometimes specialized in certain topical areas . Fachhochschulen were founded in Germany and later adopted by Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece...

). Of the 77 who completed tertiary schooling, 55.8% were Swiss men, 37.7% were Swiss women. , there were 3 students in Gordevio who came from another village, while 105 residents attended schools outside the village.
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