Losanna · CH
Lausanne Highlights: The Medieval Cité
Climb the Olympic capital's hilltop old town, from the cathedral's night-watchman to the buzzing Flon.
Di cosa parla la passeggiata?
Welcome to Lausanne, the Olympic capital rising in steep terraces above Lake Geneva. This walk keeps you high on the hill, in the medieval Cité, where cobbled lanes and covered wooden stairs link a Gothic cathedral, a painted town-hall square, and a bishops' castle that now governs a whole canton. You will begin at the castle at the summit and let gravity do the work, winding downhill past Switzerland's finest cathedral, past a fountain where mechanical figures parade on the hour, and down into the reborn Flon valley with its warehouses, boutiques and nightlife. Along the way you will meet Lausanne's most charming survivor: a living night-watchman who still climbs the belfry to call the hours over the sleeping city, just as watchmen have done here for more than six centuries. Compact, walkable and packed with stories, this is the old town at its most atmospheric.
Cosa vedrai
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1
Château Saint-Maire
Castle
A stout medieval castle of brick and sandstone crowning the summit of Lausanne's old town. Once the fortified home of prince-bishops, it now houses the government of the Canton of Vaud.
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2
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Lausanne
Cathedral
Switzerland's grandest Gothic cathedral crowns the medieval Cité, its stone towers rising high above Lake Geneva. Inside glows a rose window that has mapped the medieval cosmos for eight centuries.
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3
Place de la Riponne & Palais de Rumine
square
A vast open square that suddenly breaks the grip of the medieval lanes, dominated by the Palais de Rumine, a Florentine Renaissance palace that looks transplanted from Italy to the shore of Lake Geneva. Behind its arches sit five museums and the memory of a treaty that redrew a nation's borders.
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4
Escaliers du Marché
Landmark
A covered wooden staircase climbing steeply from Place de la Palud toward the cathedral, its timber roof and cobbled lane forming one of Lausanne's most photographed corners.
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5
Place de la Palud
Square
Lausanne's oldest square, a cobbled clearing wrapped in painted facades and centred on the brightly coloured Fountain of Justice. On the hour, a mechanical clock on the wall springs to life with a parade of tiny figures acting out the region's history.
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6
Hôtel de Ville de Lausanne
landmark
The arcaded seventeenth century town hall that has anchored Place de la Palud for three and a half centuries, its slender belfry still keeping watch over Lausanne's oldest square.
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7
Église Saint-François
church
A weathered Gothic friary church anchoring Lausanne's busiest pedestrian square, its 56 metre bell tower rising above the cafés and shopfronts of the lower old town.
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8
Le Flon (Place de l'Europe)
District
A valley of century-old freight warehouses reborn as Lausanne's boldest quarter of design shops, bars, clubs and cinemas. Enter from Place de l'Europe, where the city's two metro lines cross beneath your feet.
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9
Tour Bel-Air
Landmark
Rising sharply above the Flon valley, this slender stone tower was the very first skyscraper built in Switzerland. Once a scandal that citizens feared would dwarf their cathedral, it is now a beloved Art Deco landmark.
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