Switzerland has not escaped the process of urbanization. This small, mountainous country constructs her identity and representations thereof on the mountain countryside and rural villages, entirely in opposition to the city, which is considered bad for people. The "village suisse", created for the 1900 Universal Exposition at Paris, an incontrovertible element in the discourse of anti-urbanism and a source of the Swiss mythology, opposed the virtuous rural Switzerland with the Switzerland corrupted by big cities. The village is presented as a source of national unity and a refuge against the menace of war.