page_title: Spiez
section_title: Geography
hierarchical_section_title: Spiez / Geography
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Spiez aus der Luft English: Spiez by air
context_page_description: Spiez is a town and municipality on the shore of Lake Thun in the Bernese Oberland region of the Swiss canton of Bern. It is part of the Frutigen-Niedersimmental administrative district. Besides the town of Spiez, the municipality also includes the settlements of Einigen, Hondrich, Faulensee, and Spiezwiler.
  The official language of Spiez is German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect.
context_section_description: Spiez is located on the south shore of Lake Thun, stretching along a ridge that separates the lake front from the Kander that runs parallel and to the south. From its lowest point on the lake, at 558 m (1,831 ft) above sea level, it reaches a height of 852 m (2,795 ft) on the ridge at Hondrichhügel.
  The municipality comprises five villages (Bäuerte): Spiez, Einigen, Hondrich, Faulensee and Spiezwiler (formerly Wyler). It has an area of 16.69 km² (6.44 sq mi). As of 2012, a total of 6.01 km² (2.32 sq mi) or 36.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while 4.99 km² (1.93 sq mi) or 29.9% is forested. The rest of the municipality is 5.27 km² (2.03 sq mi) or 31.6% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.34 km² (0.13 sq mi) or 2.0% is either rivers or lakes and 0.15 km² (37 acres) or 0.9% is unproductive land.
  During the same year, industrial buildings made up 2.6% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 17.3% and transportation infrastructure made up 9.5%. while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.4%. A total of 28.8% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.1% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 5.5% is used for growing crops and  28.0% is pasturage, while 2.6% is used for orchards or vine crops. Of the water in the municipality, 1.0% is in lakes and 1.0% is in rivers and streams.
  On 31 December 2009 Amtsbezirk Niedersimmental, the municipality's former district, was dissolved. On the following day, 1 January 2010, it joined the newly created Verwaltungskreis Frutigen-Niedersimmental.
caption: Spiez from the air, with the lake in the background and the Kander bottom left
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