The other native names also refer to the Grey League: Grischùn in Sutsilvan, Grischun in the other forms of Romansh, and Grigioni in Italian.

The only sizable city in the canton is Chur, as the majority of the population lives in mountainous areas, including some of the most remote valleys of the country.

One of the birthplaces of winter sports, the canton is a major tourist destination year-round, including a large number of Alpine resort towns, notably Davos and St. Moritz.

Formerly occupied by the Rhaeti, most of the lands of the canton became part of the Roman province called Raetia, which was established in 15 BC, with Curia, a settlement dating back to the Pfyn culture, as capital city.

As a consequence, its topography is extremely rugged and many of the highest settlements in the country (and Europe) are found there, notably in the Upper Engadin.

These are the Albula, the Bregaglia, the Glarus, the Gotthard, the Lepontine, the Livigno, the Plessur, the Oberhalbstein, the Ortler, the Rätikon, the Samnaun, the Sesvenna and the Silvretta ranges.

The Inn is one of the longest rivers in the canton and forms an almost straight valley, from the Maloja Pass to Martina, with a change of direction near Zernez.

[10] Although no large bodies of water are found in the canton, numerous mountain lakes (above 800 m elevation) dot the landscape, some of them being used as reservoirs for hydroelectricity production.

The canton is particularly renowned for its numerous Alpine resort towns, notably two of the aforementioned ones (Davos and St. Moritz), but also Klosters, Arosa, Lenzerheide, Disentis, Flims, Pontresina and Scuol.

The inner valleys, particularly the Engadin, are significantly drier than the north and south side of the Alps, being sheltered by the high mountains of the range.

The Grisons shares border with numerous regions of Europe, reflecting its cultural diversity, and is the only canton adjacent to three different countries.

In 1367 the League of God's House (Cadi, Gottes Haus, Ca' di Dio) was founded to resist the rising power of the Bishop of Chur.

The Habsburgs were defeated at Calven Gorge and Dornach, helping the Swiss Confederation and the allied leagues of the canton of the Grisons to be recognised.

On the evening of 18/19 July 1620, a force of Valtellina rebels supported by Austrian and Italian troops marched into Tirano and began killing Protestants.

In response, in February 1621, Jenatsch led a force of anti-Habsburg troops to attack Rietberg Castle, the home of a leader of the pro-Catholic faction, Pompeius Planta.

[27] The murder of Planta encouraged the Protestant faction and they assembled a poorly led and disorganized army to retake the Valtellina and other subject lands.

The resulting peace treaty of January 1622, forced Grisons to cede the Müstair, the Lower Engadine and Prättigau valleys.

Jürg Jenatsch and Ulysses von Salis used French money to hire an 8,000-man mercenary army and drive out the Austrians.

[31] The constitution of the Grisons, last revised on 14 September 2003, states in its preamble that the canton's purpose is to "safeguard freedom, peace, and human dignity, ensure democracy and the Rechtsstaat, promote prosperity and social justice and preserving a sane environment for the future generations, with the intention of promoting trilingualism and cultural variety and conserving them as part of our historical heritage".

Since the late Middle Ages the Romansh language has greatly reduced (by more than half the original territory, that included Liechtenstein and sections of western Austria) the area where it is spoken by the majority of the population.

Romansh consists of five dialect groups, each with its own written language: Sursilvan, Vallader, Puter, Surmiran and Sutsilvan.

In the southern valleys of Mesolcina and Val Poschiavo there is corn (maize) and chestnut farming, allowed by the milder climate.

Tourism is concentrated around the towns of Davos, Klosters, Lenzerheide, Arosa, Flims, St. Moritz and Pontresina, which have large ski areas.

Business tourism is also a source of revenue, notably in Davos, where the World Economic Forum meetings are traditionally organised.

Being the highest elevated state in Switzerland, the Grisons hosts huge alpine areas that are not accessible by any means of transport but have to be walked to.

[54] A large number of cable transport facilities provide easy access to some of the mountains of the Grisons, the highest being on Piz Corvatsch.

Its common denominator, however, is a strong mountain culture marked by life in isolated rural communities, notably depicted in Johanna Spyri's Heidi.

Three World Heritage Sites are located in the canton: the Benedictine Convent of Saint John, the Swiss Tectonic Arena Sardona and the Rhaetian Railway in the Albula and Bernina Landscapes.

[55] Capuns consist of hearty dumplings with pieces of meat wrapped in chard leaves, then gratinated in oven with cheese and cream.

The Grisons successfully reintroduced ibex in the early 20th century after it had all but died out from the Alps, except for an area in the Aosta Valley in Italy, Parco Nazionale Gran Paradiso.