This is quite technical, but its important to us. Across all Switzerland there are thousands of those metal poles with mirrors on the end that enable you to see up and down roads so you can check if cars are coming before you pull out into the road (or indeed walkers can see before going onto a crossing etc).

The poles are normally Y Shaped so you can attach one or two mirrors depending if you want to look left or right or both and its normally those round or square mirrors with a colourful border.

Ok, so with that described, here's the ask: Who owns the pole ? I know that the mirror doesn't belong to the commune because when ours was torn down by some kids we had to replace it ourselves. But equally im not aware of any agreement in our housing contract that says we have leased a tiny bit of land to put a pole in from our neighbours (because in our case the pole is coming out of our neighbours garden). So it isnt clear.

The relevance of all this is our particular pole was adorned with some public footpath signs this week, the official ones (i.e. those nice yellow arrows with a bloke walking on them). No huge problem with it, but I would have liked to be told if we own that pole. If the commune owns it I guess they can put up flyer's for rave's on them and there isnt really anything we can argue about.

Hence the question.

Thanks all.

I guess it depends who put it there in the first place, the commune for the benefit of all, or the land owner for the benefit of themselves. I find it odd though that the landowner would be responsible for the mirror and the commune the pole though.

Different ownership of land, pole, and mirror only complicates things (unnecessarily). So generally the owner of the land will also own the pole and the mirrors, signs, etc. Any kind of mixed ownership would seem quite odd. You seem to rent ("housing contract"), what does the owner say?

What use are the mirrors to you? I find it odd that you'd have to replace them if they serve someone else. Did you trust someone's word or were you shown proof? Otherwise I'd expect a slanted pole that reaches over to your side to be treated like a tree growing across the border, i.e. that it's your neighbor's responsibility to remove the problem upon your demand. But there may be a reason for the slantedness, it might be much less useful if straight.

Good question.

We've got a yellow Wanderweg sign on the edge of our property and I wondered the same thing.

Someone, at some time, must have agreed to have it installed on the land but I suppose it could quite possibly pre-date the house.

I own my house. The mirrors are on the land of the Neighbour opposite (there is a road in between) so that when I drive out of my drive I can see what is coming up and down the road.

I will have to ask the commune because I can’t believe the Neighbour owns it - it would mean if they decided to remove it I couldn’t exit my house without significant danger and it would be the same for the rest of the street as every house has such a mirror opposite.