Les Verrières

Les Verrières (le vɛʁjɛʁ) is a municipality in the canton of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. Les Verrières is first mentioned in 1344 as villa de Verreriis. Jt was here that General Charles-Denis Bourbaki crossed the Swiss border with the remnants of the Armée de l'Est during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). Les Verrières has an area, , of . Of this area, or 46.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 50.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 3.3% is settled (buildings or roads) and or 0.4% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 1.3% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.6%. Out of the forested land, 46.4% of the total land area is heavily forested and 4.2% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 1.2% is used for growing crops and 22.8% is pastures and 22.0% is used for alpine pastures. The municipality was located in the district of Val-de-Travers, until the district level was eliminated on 1 January 2018. The main settlement is a linear village that is about long and consists of the villages of Cret, Belle Perche, Grand Bourgeau, Croix-Blanche and Meudon. Outside the main village, there are the hamlets of Cernets and Mont-des-Verrières and scattered settlements over an elevation of above sea level. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Azure, on a bend Argent three Mullets [of Six] of the first. Les Verrières has a population () of . , 5.1% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of -10.1%. Migration accounted for -7.2%, while births and deaths accounted for -1.9%. Most of the population () speaks French (661 or 89.9%) as their first language, German is the second most common (32 or 4.4%) and English is the third (7 or 1.0%). There are 4 people who speak Italian and 3 people who speak Romansh. the population was 50.1% male and 49.9% female. The population was made up of 307 Swiss men (46.0% of the population) and 27 (4.0%) non-Swiss men.