Switzerland's fourth city is cheaper than its reputation suggests: the best viewpoints, parks, lake beaches and vineyard paths cost nothing, museums open free on the first Saturday, and hotel guests ride every metro and bus for free.
A 35m wooden lookout tower built in 2003 from local Douglas fir, free to climb via 151 spiral steps. The platform frames Lake Geneva, the Jura ridge and Mont Blanc on a clear day. Open dawn to dusk, no ticket, no queue.
A small forest lake five minutes downhill from the tower, ringed by a 700m gravel path, free public barbecue pits and an enclosure with goats, ibex and Highland cattle. Bring supermarket sausages and grill for nothing.
Outsider art by psychiatric patients, prisoners and self-taught visionaries, in the Château de Beaulieu — 70,000 works gathered by Jean Dubuffet. CHF 12 normally, free the first Saturday of every month like all Lausanne museums.
A free terrace park above the Flon with gravel walks, a bandstand and an unbroken sweep across the lake to the Savoy Alps. Locals carry bottles up from the Coop below and take the low wall for sunset.
Lausanne's biggest open-air market fills Place de la Riponne every Wednesday and Saturday, 08:00 to 14:00: Vaud cheeses, Lavaux wine, fruit, bread and rotisserie chicken. Traders cut prices after 13:00 rather than repack.
A Lausanne-founded burger counter using Swiss beef and Gruyère; the Lucifer runs about CHF 15, roughly CHF 20 with fries and a local craft beer — close to half what a sit-down Swiss lunch costs here.
A cramped upstairs café at the top of the Escaliers du Marché pouring the city's thickest hot chocolate since the 1970s, about CHF 7 a cup. Wooden tables, scribbled walls, cash preferred for small orders.
A café-bar on Rue Enning where the after-work crowd lands. Draught beer falls to roughly CHF 5 during the 17:00-19:00 happy hour, and the daily plate stays near CHF 20 — cheap by Lausanne standards.
The UNESCO-listed Lavaux terraces begin one stop from Lausanne. The waymarked path from Lutry station climbs through stone-walled vineyards to Aran and Grandvaux; the walk is free, the regional train about CHF 4.60.
Grandvaux's terrace is the classic Lavaux picnic stop — village fountain, benches and a 180-degree drop to the lake with the Dents du Midi closing the view. Stock up at the Coop in Lutry before climbing.
Lausanne's free public beach west of Ouchy: pebble and grass shoreline, changing huts, free barbecue grills and lawns under poplars. Metro m1 to Bourdonnette then ten minutes on foot, or bus 2 to Bois-de-Vaux.
The grounds of the Fondation de l'Hermitage: a 19th-century estate of cedars, grazing sheep and lawns aimed straight at the cathedral spire. The park stays free even when the museum charges to go inside.