Villiers, Switzerland

Villiers is a former municipality in the district of Val-de-Ruz in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.

The municipalities of Boudevilliers, Cernier, Chézard-Saint-Martin, Coffrane, Dombresson, Engollon, Fenin-Vilars-Saules, Fontainemelon, Fontaines, Les Geneveys-sur-Coffrane, Les Hauts-Geneveys, Montmollin, Le Pâquier, Savagnier and Villiers merged on 1 January 2013 into the new municipality of Val-de-Ruz.

[3] The former municipality is located in the Val de Ruz district, at the foot of the Chaumont and near the source of the Seyon river.

It consists of the village of Villiers, the hamlet of Clémesin and the alpine pastures of de La Dame, Chuffort, Aarberg, Ile-Frienisberg and Dombresson.

The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules, a Heart Argent and in chief a Mullet of Eight of the same.

[7] Most of the population (as of 2000[update]) speaks French (379 or 96.2%) as their first language, German is the second most common (9 or 2.3%) and English is the third (2 or 0.5%).

[7] The historical population is given in the following chart:[2][11] In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 27.66% of the vote.

[7] There were 204 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 43.6% of the workforce.

In the tertiary sector; 1 was in the sale or repair of motor vehicles, 4 or 18.2% were in a hotel or restaurant and 1 was in the information industry.

[7] From the 2000 census[update], 58 or 14.7% were Roman Catholic, while 205 or 52.0% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church.

During the 2010–11 school year, there were 3 kindergarten classes with a total of 50 students between the municipalities.

Aerial view from 1600 m by Walter Mittelholzer (1926)