Steckborn is a municipality in Frauenfeld District in the canton of Thurgau in Switzerland. It is located on the south-western arm of Lake Constance known in German as the Untersee ("Lower Lake"). History The area around Steckborn was already inhabited in the second century. There are also Roman remains of walls and fortifications. It is thought that the village became part of the territory of the monastery of Reichenau in the ninth century. This is the period when it is first documented. In 1313 Steckborn was first granted municipal rights. Because all ecclesiastical authority ended with the French invasion in 1798, the dominance of Reichenau also ended. Steckborn has been the district capital of its district since the founding of the canton of Thurgau in 1803. When a new tower was to be built for the church in 1833, a 17-year-old first-year apprentice, Ferdinand Stadler, was given the chance to draw up the plans. In 1848 the Cistercian convent at Feldbach was closed. In 1890 an embroidery workshop was established in the buildings of the Feldbach convent. This was to grow into the Bernina Sewing Machine Factory, now known as BERNINA International. Geography Steckborn has an area, , of . Of this area, or 36.1% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 46.5% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 17.4% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.2% is either rivers or lakes. Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 9.4% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 0.9% and transportation infrastructure made up 0.3%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.6% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 5.1%. Out of the forested land, 44.7% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.7% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 33.0% is used for growing crops, while 3.1% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. Demographics Steckborn has a population () of . , 22.3% of the population are foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has remained the same. Most of the population () speaks German (87.4%), with Italian being second most common ( 4.6%) and Albanian being third ( 1.9%). , the gender distribution of the population was