Lausanne & Montreux

The Lake Geneva Riviera is the gentlest stretch of the lake: palms on the quays, terraced vineyards and grand hotels built for the nineteenth-century travellers who came for its mild light. Lausanne is about forty minutes by train from Geneva, Montreux about an hour, and both lie on the main line to the Valais and the mountain resorts.

Lausanne climbs steeply from the lakeside port of Ouchy to its Gothic cathedral, where a watchman still calls out the hours from the tower each night. The city is the seat of the International Olympic Committee, with the Olympic Museum on the shore at Ouchy, and its art museums are gathered at Plateforme 10, beside the station. To the east, the Lavaux terraces, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2007, descend in stone-walled steps to the water, planted mostly with Chasselas and threaded with footpaths between wine villages such as Lutry, Cully and Saint-Saphorin.

Vevey, where Nestlé has its headquarters and Charlie Chaplin spent his last years, keeps an old market square on the lake; his house at Corsier-sur-Vevey is now the museum Chaplin’s World. Montreux follows, with its flowered quays, a mild climate that suits palms and magnolias, and the Château de Chillon on its rock in the water, made famous by Byron. Above the town, a cogwheel railway climbs to the Rochers-de-Naye, and the GoldenPass line crosses the mountains to Gstaad and Interlaken.

Summer is the season of the shore, with lake swimming, steamers to Évian and the villages of Lavaux, and the Montreux Jazz Festival, founded in 1967, which fills the town and its hotels for two weeks in early July. September and October bring the harvest to Lavaux, when the terraces turn gold and the cellars open for tastings of the new wine.

Spring arrives early on this sheltered shore, and Cully Jazz takes over the vineyard village in April. Winter is mild and quiet by the lake; Montreux Noël, its Christmas market on the quays, runs through Advent, and the ski areas of the Alpes vaudoises, Gstaad and the Valais are within easy reach by road or rail.

In Lausanne, the Beau-Rivage Palace, whose story begins in 1861, stands in its gardens on the lake at Ouchy, with the cooking of Anne-Sophie Pic; the Royal Savoy Hotel & Spa lies a short walk up the hill, and the Lausanne Palace, inaugurated in 1915, overlooks the lake from the heart of the city. In Vevey, the Hôtel des Trois Couronnes & Destination Spa faces the water from the old town, and in Montreux the Fairmont Le Montreux Palace, opened in 1906, keeps the long Belle Époque façade that defines the Montreux quays.

LVXE books the Beau-Rivage Palace, the Royal Savoy, the Lausanne Palace and the Trois Couronnes through LHW VITA, and the Fairmont Le Montreux Palace through Accor Preferred — at the official hotel rate, with the privileges each programme attaches to the stay. For other houses on the shore, LVXE advises on the stay and arranges it directly with the hotel. Montreux is fully booked during the jazz festival, so rooms for early July are best reserved many months ahead.