Glarus (city)

Glarus (481 m/1,578ft; pop. 5,700) lying at the foot of Glärnisch (Vorderglärnisch, 2,331 m/7,648ft), is capital of the canton, rebuilt in 1861 on a regular grid plan after a devastating fire. The twin-towered Neo-Romanesque church (Protestant) was built in 1866; fine treasury. In the Town Hall is a relief model of the canton on a scale of 1:25,000. The Landesgemeinde (communal assembly) meets every year on the first Sunday in May in the Zaunplatz. In the courthouse are the cantonal archives and cantonal library, with a famous early map of Switzerland by Ägidus Tschudi (1570).

Out of the town are some houses which survived the fire, examples of the architecture such as Leuzinger-Paravicini house (16th C.) and the "Haus in der Wies" ("house in the meadow"), built for Johann Heinrich Streiff (1746-1748), the founder of the Glarnus textile industry.