The municipality of Hünenberg in the canton of Zug is basking in glory after being named the best place to live in Switzerland.

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The otherwise modest community of 7,656 inhabitants topped a list of 876 municipalities rated for the fourth consecutive year for a list published by Weltwoche, the weekly German-language magazine.

The cantonal tourism office touts Hünenberg for its numerous farming hamlets, a “family-friendly” village centre, a nature reserve and such historic sites as the St. Wolfgang Gothic church, dating back to 1475.

But the Weltwoche ranking, released last week, was more focused on such aspects as the municipality’s low  tax rates, high employment rate, prosperous standard of living and dynamic demographics.

The list was compiled after communities with populations of more than 2,000 people were evaluated by the IAZI real estate consulting firm in Zurich.

Under the direction of Donato Scognamiglio, a professor from the University of Bern, the firm compared the municipalities according to 20 different factors.

One of the key findings was that of the top ten most attractive places to live, all but one were in central Switzerland.

Communities from the canton of Zug nabbed four of the top seven spots.

The village of Risch, with its network of footpaths and cycle tracks around Lake Zug, ranked second, followed by Feusisberg and Lachen (both in the canton of Schwyz) and Cham, which ranked first in 2011, also in Zug.

The only community from French-speaking Switzerland to crack the top ten was Satigny in the canton of Geneva (ranked eighth), which boasts the largest wine-growing area of any Swiss municipality.

Other communities in the top ten included Freienbach (Schwyz), ranked sixth; Steinhausen (Zug), seventh; Fehraltorf (Zurich), ninth; and Volketswil (Zurich), tenth.