Flags and arms of cantons of Switzerland there is overlap; Unterwalden and Solothurn share the same colours, as do Basel and Appenzell, and with the accession of the modern cantons, Valais and Basel-City, and St. Gallen and Thurgau. Of the 26 cantons since 1999 (22 cantons in 1848, accession of Jura in 1979, three half-cantons designated "canton" in 1999): Distinctively, Swiss cantons use square flags. Historically, the number of cantons was: Nidwalden and Obwalden form traditional subdivisions of Unterwalden. Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft, as well as Appenzell Inner- and Ausserrhoden, are half cantons, resulting from the division of Basel and Appenzell, respectively. The Swiss Federal Constitution of 1999
Cantons of Switzerland Swiss Federal Constitution of 1999 by being joined to their other "half" with the conjunction "and": In contrast, the first article of the 1848 and 1874 constitutions constituted the Confederation as the union of "twenty-two sovereign cantons", referring to the half-cantons as "Unterwalden ( [‘above and beneath the woods’])", "Basel ( [‘city and country’])" and "Appenzell ( [‘both Rhoden’])". The 1999 constitutional revision retained this distinction, on the request of the six cantonal governments, as a way to mark the historic association of the half-cantons to each other. While the older constitutions referred to these states as "half-cantons", a term