Airolo (Airöö in Lombard, in ) is a municipality in the district of Leventina in the canton of Ticino in Switzerland. Geography Airolo is located in Leventina valley and the Lepontine Alps, on the southern flank of the St. Gotthard Pass. Both the Gotthard rail tunnel, on the important Gotthard railway linking northern and southern Europe, and the Gotthard road tunnel, on the A2 motorway, have their southern portal in Airolo. It is the largest municipality in the canton of Ticino, and consists of the village of Airolo and the hamlets of Valle, Madrano, Brugnasco, Nante and Fontana. The municipalities of Airolo and Quinto are considering a merger some time in the future into a new municipality which will be known as Airolo-Quinto. Airolo has an area, , of . Of this area, or 3.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 21.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 2.9% is settled (buildings or roads), or 2.4% is either rivers or lakes and or 41.6% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 0.6% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.8%. Out of the forested land, 14.9% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.5% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 3.2% is used for growing crops. Of the water in the municipality, 1.5% is in lakes and 0.9% is in rivers and streams. Of the unproductive areas, 20.2% is unproductive vegetation and 21.4% is too rocky for vegetation. Coat of arms The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Azure on a base Vert a fir tree Argent issuant and a lion rampant Or. Demographics Airolo has a population () of . , 21.5% of the population are foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1997–2007) the population has changed at a rate of −14.6%. Most of the population () speaks Italian (85.6%), with German being second most common (3.6%) and Serbo-Croatian being third (3.3%). Of the Swiss national languages (), 57 speak German, 8 people speak French, 1,363 people speak Italian, and 1 person speaks Romansh. The remainder (164 people) speak another language. , the gender distribution of the population was 49.9% male and 50.1% female. The population was made up of 577 Swiss men (37.6% of the population), and 189 (12.3%) non-Swiss men. There were 641 Swiss women (41.8%), and