🇨🇭 Switzerland · West and Lake Geneva
Lausanne is a city that goes up and down. Hung on a steep hillside between Lake Geneva and the hills, it makes you walk uphill, climb stairs and use Switzerland's only metro to cope with the gradient. That effort is repaid with viewpoints, a magnificent Gothic cathedral and an old town full of student life, markets and terraces. It is the capital of French-speaking Switzerland in character: cultured, relaxed, speaking French and looking out over the lake and the Savoy Alps outlined on the other side.
It is also the 'Olympic Capital': the International Olympic Committee has been based here since 1915, when Pierre de Coubertin moved the administration of the Olympic movement to neutral Switzerland in the middle of the First World War. That link is palpable in the excellent Olympic Museum, looking out over the lake at Ouchy, the old port that is today the city's great balcony over the water. And up high, in the cathedral tower, a unique medieval rite lives on: a watchman has called the hours every night since 1405.
This guide covers Lausanne with a practical, warm eye: how to get around on its steep metro, what to see from the old town to the lake, where its art beats (from the great Olympic Museum to the extraordinary outsider art of the Collection de l'Art Brut), how to make the most of Ouchy and the Lake Geneva boats, and how to use the city as a base for Lavaux, Montreux and Chillon. One warning up front, though: Switzerland is expensive, and Lausanne is no exception.
Lausanne's history begins on the lakeshore. In Roman times there was Lousonna here, a vicus (village) of Celtic origin founded around 15 BC in the Vidy area, with a forum, a basilica and a temple. After the fall of Rome and the insecurity of the Early Middle Ages, the population moved to the more defensible hill, and in the 6th century Bishop Marius moved his episcopal see from Avenches to Lausanne, which became a powerful bishopric city; in 1275 its great Gothic cathedral was consecrated. In 1536 the Bernese conquered the Vaud country, imposed the Protestant Reformation and the bishop had to flee: Lausanne lost its bishopric and became a subject territory of Bern for more than two and a half centuries. Independence came in 1798 with the Vaud revolution, and in 1803 Lausanne became the capital of the new canton of Vaud within the Swiss Confederation. The 19th century brought the railway, the university and growth. The milestone that would shape its modern identity came in 1915, when Pierre de Coubertin installed the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, fleeing the war in France; it has been the 'Olympic Capital' ever since. The full history is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓French Switzerland on the shores of Lake Geneva: Geneva, Calvin's "Protestant Rome" turned capital of world diplomacy; Lausanne, home of the Olympic movement; and Montreux, with the Savoy dukes' Chillon Castle and its legendary jazz festival.
Read the history of West and Lake Geneva →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before it climbed the hill where its cathedral stands today, Lausanne was born down below, at the water's edge. In the Vidy area, on the shore of Lake Geneva, the Romans founded around 15 BC a vicus — a village of some importance — that they called Lousonna, a name of Celtic root recalling the Helvetian peoples who already lived in the region before the conquest. Lousonna was not a great city, but it was a prosperous place: it grew as a port and a staging post on the routes linking Italy with Gaul across the Alps and the Rhône valley.
Excavations have revealed a well-organised settlement, with a forum, a basilica, a sanctuary with a temple, quays, port warehouses, workshops and dwellings. It is estimated to have had around fifteen hundred inhabitants at its peak, between the 1st and 3rd centuries. It lived off river and lake trade, wine, pottery and the movement of goods. Today the Roman Museum of Lausanne-Vidy, built over the remains, lets you picture that settlement that was the seed of the city.
With the crisis of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century and the Germanic incursions, safety on the shore became precarious. As happened in so many late imperial cities, the inhabitants gradually abandoned the exposed lowland and sought refuge higher up. The population withdrew little by little towards the hill of la Cité, easier to defend, dominated by a promontory above the Flon valley. There, up high, the medieval Lausanne we still recognise today began to take shape.
The shift from Roman village to medieval city had one decisive driver: the Church. In the late 6th century, around the year 590, Bishop Marius moved his episcopal see from Avenches, the old Roman capital of the region, to Lausanne. The bishop's arrival changed the place's destiny: Lausanne became the head of an extensive bishopric and a religious, administrative and economic centre of the first rank within the Holy Roman Empire.
Through the Middle Ages, the bishops of Lausanne accumulated enormous temporal power, acting as lords of the city and much of its lands, often in tension with the burghers, with the powerful neighbouring House of Savoy and with the chapters. The medieval city was organised in several nuclei climbing the hills — the episcopal Cité at the top, the Bourg and other districts below — linked by steep streets and bridges over the torrents.
The symbol of that episcopal Lausanne is its Notre-Dame Cathedral, one of the supreme works of Gothic architecture in Switzerland. Its construction spanned much of the 12th and 13th centuries, and it was solemnly consecrated in 1275 in the presence of Pope Gregory X and Emperor Rudolf I of Habsburg, a double endorsement showing the importance the city had reached. The cathedral, with its famous medieval rose window and its painted portal, became a pilgrimage destination and the spiritual heart of the region.
From that medieval period also comes a custom that survives today against all odds: since 1405, a watchman — the guet — keeps watch every night from the cathedral tower and calls the hours to the four winds. It began as a fire alarm system, the great threat to cities built of wood. Six centuries later, when it serves no practical purpose, Lausanne keeps it as one of the oldest and best-loved living traditions in Europe.
The 16th century brought Lausanne a radical turn. In 1536, in the context of the wars between the House of Savoy and the Swiss cantons, the troops of the city-state of Bern, under Captain Hans Franz Nägeli, conquered the whole Vaud country. Bern was an expanding Protestant power, and with the conquest it immediately imposed the Reformation on the occupied territories.
That same year the famous Lausanne Disputation (Dispute de Lausanne) was held in the city, a public theological debate between defenders of Catholicism and reformers, in which a still very young John Calvin took part. The outcome, decided in advance by Bernese power, was victory for the Reformation: the Catholic mass was abolished, images and altars were removed from the churches, and the Gothic cathedral became a Protestant church, stripped of its ornamentation. Bishop Sébastien de Montfaucon had to flee to Savoy, and Lausanne lost its status as an episcopal see, which it never regained.
For the following 262 years, Lausanne and the whole Vaud country were subject to Bern as conquered territory, governed by Bernese bailiffs. It was a period of relative peace and some agricultural and winegrowing prosperity — much of the splendour of the Lavaux vineyards dates from this stage — but also of political subordination and discontent among a French-speaking population governed by German-speaking lords. In 1723, the Vaudois officer Jean Daniel Abraham Davel led an attempt to free Vaud from Bernese rule; he failed and was executed, but over time he became a hero and martyr of Vaudois identity.
The end of Bernese rule came with the Revolution. In 1798, in the heat of the French Revolution and with the backing of Napoleonic troops, the Vaudois proclaimed their independence from Bern and founded the short-lived Lemanic Republic. Shortly afterwards the region was absorbed into the Helvetic Republic and then, with Napoleon's Act of Mediation of 1803, the canton of Vaud was born as a full member of the Swiss Confederation. Lausanne was designated its capital, a rank that cemented its role as the political, administrative and cultural centre of western Switzerland.
The 19th century transformed the city. The arrival of the railway in the middle of the century connected it with Geneva, Bern and the rest of Europe, and made Lausanne a communications hub on the northern shore of Lake Geneva. Ouchy, the old fishing port, filled with hotels and life, drawing travellers, writers and aristocrats after the mild climate of the lake; figures such as Lord Byron passed through, and later T. S. Eliot, who wrote part of The Waste Land in Lausanne. Educational institutions were founded that would give rise to the University of Lausanne and, later, to the prestigious Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), today one of the great scientific hubs in Europe.
The city, perched on its hillside, solved its difficult geography with engineering works: it filled in valleys, threw great bridges across the Flon and, as early as 1877, opened a pioneering funicular between Ouchy and the upper town, the embryo of what a century later would be its metro, the only one in Switzerland. Lausanne grew as a modern city that never stopped going up and down its hills.
The event that would most shape Lausanne's modern identity came in the middle of the First World War. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, was looking for a safe, neutral place for the administrative headquarters of the Olympic movement, far from a Europe at war. He had loved Lausanne for years — an Olympic congress held there in 1913 had convinced him — and chose the city on the shore of Lake Geneva. On 10 April 1915, in an official ceremony at the town hall, Coubertin and the official Godefroy de Blonay signed with mayor Paul Maillefer the agreement that permanently installed the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne.
That decision, taken for the neutrality and the beauty of the place, had enormous consequences. Over time, Lausanne became the 'Olympic Capital': Coubertin lived and died here, the IOC and dozens of international sports federations are based here, and here in Ouchy stands the great Olympic Museum, opened in 1993 and one of the most visited in the country. In 1994, the Committee officially recognised the city's title of 'Olympic Capital'.
The Lausanne of the 20th and 21st centuries grew as a university, scientific and service city, with the University of Lausanne and the EPFL drawing students and researchers from all over the world. In 2008 it opened the M2 metro line, the first automatic metro line in Switzerland and a technical feat capable of covering more than 300 metres of height gain between the lake and the heights. Today Lausanne combines its medieval heritage — the cathedral, the night watchman, the old town — with a modern face of museums, science and sport, and with its role as the gateway to the Lake Geneva Riviera, the Lavaux vineyards and Montreux. It remains, as it was two thousand years ago, a city looking out over its lake.