Lausanne began as the Roman vicus of Lousonna on the shore, moved uphill to the defensible Cité after the empire fell, and grew into a bishop's city until Bern took it by force in 1536. Three days trace that climb, stone by stone.
Built over a real Roman house in the vicus of Lousonna, founded around 15 BC as a port and road station. Mosaics, altars and the bronze hand of a Gallo-Roman deity sit in situ. Open Tue–Sun 11:00–18:00, closed Mondays.
A working-class port tavern from the era when Ouchy was a separate fishing village annexed by Lausanne only in 1798. Papet vaudois — leeks stewed with saucisse aux choux — is the Vaud dish that predates tourism here.
Consecrated 1275 in the presence of Pope Gregory X and Rudolf of Habsburg. Beneath the Gothic nave lie four earlier churches back to the 6th century, and the painted portal retains its original 13th-century polychromy.
The bishops' brick-and-stone residence, begun 1397, became the seat of the Bernese bailiff after the 1536 conquest and today houses the Vaud cantonal government. The covered wooden market stairs below date to the 13th century.
Inside the 1906 Florentine-revival palace funded by Gabriel de Rumine's bequest. Holdings run from the Bronze Age lake-dwellings of Lac Léman to the gold bust of Marcus Aurelius found at Avenches in 1939.
On 24 January 1798 Vaud declared itself the Lemanic Republic here, ending 262 years of Bernese rule. The square was later cleared for the Rumine palace; plaques and the Bel-Air tower of 1932 frame the city's first modern skyline.
An 1850 country house built by the Bugnion banking family above the city, kept with its original parquet, stoves and servant bells. Donated to Lausanne in 1976, it now shows major exhibitions in genuine 19th-century bourgeois rooms.
The Flon river was buried and its valley filled with 19th-century warehouses served by a private rail line; the Grand-Pont of 1844 crosses above on arches whose lower tier is still walkable and hidden inside the buildings.
The medieval merchants' suburb outside the Cité walls, laid out along a single ridge street in the 12th century. Its narrow burgage plots survive intact, and Byron, Dickens and Voltaire all lodged on or beside this lane.
Fifteen minutes east by train sits a walled village with a 12th-century church, two castles and vineyard terraces first cut by Cistercian and Benedictine monks in the 11th century — UNESCO-listed since 2007.
A Savoyard toll castle on a rock in the lake, occupied since the Bronze Age and rebuilt from 1230 by Peter II of Savoy. Bonivard was chained in its vaulted dungeon 1532–1536, the episode Byron made famous in 1816.
The Léman fleet keeps eight steam-era vessels afloat, several built between 1904 and 1927 with original steam engines still turning. The Montreux–Ouchy run passes the Lavaux terraces from the water, as travellers saw them in 1900.