Chur - Geography

Geography

Further information: Rhine Valley

Chur has an area, as of 2006, of 28 square kilometers (11 sq mi). Of this area, 18.8% is used for agricultural purposes, while 52% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 25.1% is settled (buildings or roads) and the remainder (4.1%) is non-productive (rivers, glaciers or mountains).

Chur is situated at a height of 1,949 ft (594 m) above sea-level, on the right bank of the Plessur torrent, just as it issues from the Schanfigg valley, and about a mile above its junction with the Rhine, almost entirely surrounded by the Alps, overshadowed by the Mittenberg (east) and Pizokel (south), hills that guard the entrance to the deep-cut Schanfigg valley.

The altitude in the city area varies from just 600 meters (2,000 ft) above sea level to 1,800 meters (5,900 ft) above sea level, the Churer Hausberg Brambrüesch (accessible from the Old Town) being situated at 2,174 meters (7,133 ft) above sea level.

The water of Chur's spring is exported and sold as Passugger mineral water.

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