Flags and arms of cantons of Switzerland Flags and arms of cantons of Switzerland Each of the 26 modern cantons of Switzerland has an official flag and a coat of arms. The history of development of these designs spans the 13th to the 20th centuries. The cantons are listed in their order of precedence given in the federal constitution. This reflects the historical order of precedence of the Eight Cantons in the 15th century, followed by the remaining cantons in the order of their historical accession to the confederacy. "Standesfarben" were used to identify the (historical) cantons when the full banner was not available for display, although
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