Muralto is a municipality in the district of Locarno, in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. Geography Muralto has an area, , of . Of this area, or 71.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 3.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 93.3% is settled (buildings or roads) and or 1.7% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 68.3% and transportation infrastructure made up 18.3%. while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 6.7%. Out of the forested land, 1.7% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.7% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 1.7% is used for growing crops, while 1.7% is used for orchards or vine crops and 68.3% is used for alpine pastures. The municipality is located in the Locarno district, in the agglomeration of Locarno. It lies along Lake Maggiore and is bordered by the Ramogna and Rabissale streams. It was created in 1881, when it separated from Orselina. Demographics Muralto has a population () of . , 26.9% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of -1.1%. Most of the population () speaks Italian (68.4%), with German being second most common (19.9%) and Macedonian being third (2.8%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 533 speak German, 55 people speak French, 1,830 people speak Italian, and 6 people speak Romansh. The remainder (252 people) speak another language. , the gender distribution of the population was 45.8% male and 54.2% female. The population was made up of 903 Swiss men (32.3% of the population), and 378 (13.5%) non-Swiss men. There were 1,171 Swiss women (41.8%), and 347 (12.4%) non-Swiss women. In there were 12 live births to Swiss citizens and 8 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 36 deaths of Swiss citizens and 10 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 24 while the foreign population decreased by 2. There were 2 Swiss men and 4 Swiss women who immigrated back to Switzerland. At the same time, there were 24 non-Swiss men and 20 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was a decrease of