Savièse

Savièse is a municipality in the district of Sion in the canton of Valais in Switzerland.

[3] Savièse has an area, as of 2009[update], of 70.9 square kilometers (27.4 sq mi).

This large municipality, which covers over half of the total area of the district, is bordered in the north by the Bernese Alps and is connected to the Saanenland by the Sanetsch Pass.

It consists of the six villages of Saint-Germain (the capital of the municipality), Chandolin, Granois, Drône, Roumaz and Ormone as well as multiple hamlets.

The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules, a Sword Argent hilted Or.

[8] Most of the population (as of 2000[update]) speaks French (5,013 or 93.9%) as their first language, German is the second most common (188 or 3.5%) and Portuguese is the third (54 or 1.0%).

[8] The historical population is given in the following chart:[3][12] In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the CVP which received 36.95% of the vote.

In the federal election, a total of 3,041 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 68.4%.

[14] In the 2007 Swiss Council of States election a total of 3,015 votes were cast, of which 196 or about 6.5% were invalid.

[8] There were 2,655 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 42.6% of the workforce.

In the tertiary sector; 92 or 21.0% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 25 or 5.7% were in the movement and storage of goods, 48 or 11.0% were in a hotel or restaurant, 1 was in the information industry, 9 or 2.1% were the insurance or financial industry, 28 or 6.4% were technical professionals or scientists, 42 or 9.6% were in education and 87 or 19.9% were in health care.

[8] From the 2000 census[update], 4,616 or 86.4% were Roman Catholic, while 250 or 4.7% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church.

It was open a total of 300 days with average of 14 hours per week during that year.

[19] In 2005, it was renovated by the municipality and the Association pour la sauvegarde du Torrent-Neuf and since then has become one of the most visited tourist attraction of Savièse.

Bisse de Savièse