Strasbourg (French: Strasbourg) is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in northeastern France. With 702,412 inhabitants in 2007, its metropolitan area is the ninth largest in France. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin department.
Strasbourg is the seat of several European institutions such as the Council of Europe (with its European Court of Human Rights, its European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and its European Audiovisual Observatory) and the Eurocorps as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union. Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as of road, rail, and river communications. The port of Strasbourg is the second largest on the Rhine after Duisburg, Germany.[3] The city is the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine.
Strasbourg’s historic city centre, the Grande Île (“Grand Island”), was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honor was placed on an entire city centre. Strasbourg is fused into the Franco-German culture, and although violently disputed throughout history has been a bridge of unity between France and Germany for centuries, especially through its University, currently the largest in France, and the co-existence of Catholic and Protestant culture.
Etymology
The city’s Gallicized name is of Germanic origin and means “Town (at the crossing) of roads”. The modern Stras- is cognate to the German Straße / Strasse which itself is derived from Latin strata (“street”), while -bourg (French for “village”) is cognate to the German -burg (“fortress, town, citadel”) and English borough.

Freiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, in the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest. It straddles the Dreisam river, on the foothills of the Schlossberg. The city is bordered by the Black Forest mountains Rosskopf and Bromberg to the east and Schönberg, Tuniberg to the south. The Kaiserstuhl hill region lies to the west.

BASEL
Romans: Basilea] is Switzerland’s third most populous city (166,209 inhabitants (2008)). With 731,000 inhabitants in the tri-national metropolitan area (as of 2004), Basel is Switzerland’s third-largest urban area.
Located in northwest Switzerland on the river Rhine, Basel functions as a major industrial centre for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. The city borders both Germany and France. The Basel region, culturally extending into German Baden-Württemberg and French Alsace, reflects the heritage of its three states in the modern Latin name: “Regio TriRhena”. It has the oldest university of the Swiss Confederation (1460).
Basel is often known in English as “Basle”, pronounced as in French.
Basel is German-speaking. The local variant of the Swiss German dialects is called Basel German.

Solothurn
The city of Solothurn (German: Solothurn. French: Soleure, Italian: Soletta) is the capital of the Canton of Solothurn in Switzerland. The city also comprises the only municipality of the district of the same name.
History
This Celtic settlement was renewed around AD 14–37 by the Roman emperor Claudius, and became a Roman stronghold (castrum) under the name of Salodurum. Its strategical importance lay in the position at the approach to the Rhine from southeast.
In the Middle Ages the settlement grew around the remains of the Roman fortress and the religious house of St. Ursen, dedicated to Ursus of Solothurn, founded in the 8th century. In 1127, it was acquired by the dukes of Zähringen, and became a free imperial city in 1218 when that dynasty extinguished. After the alliance with Berne in 1295, it became part of the Swiss Confederation. In 1382 the Habsburgs attacked the city, involving Solothurn in the Battle of Sempach. By the treaty of two years later, the Habsburgs renounced all claims to the territory of the city. The latter was expanded by acquisition of neighbouring lands in the 15th century, roughly up to the today’s canton area.
In 1481, it obtained full membership in the Swiss Confederation, and in 1530–1792 it was the seat of the French ambassador to the Swiss. On October 15, 1817, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, the national hero of Poland and United States died in Solothurn and was initially interred at the local cemetery.
In 1828 Solothurn became the seat of the Bishop of Basel.
Rock band Krokus was formed in Solothurn in 1974.