Vaud

Lausanne climbs in steep tiers from the old port of Ouchy to the Gothic cathedral on its hill, with the m2 metro riding the slope between them. It is the seat of the International Olympic Committee, with the Olympic Museum on the shore at Ouchy, and of two universities, EPFL and the University of Lausanne, by the lake at its western edge.

East of Lausanne, the Lavaux vineyards climb from the shore to the ridge in stone-walled terraces that go back to the 11th century, when monasteries held the slopes, and in 2007 they were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The vine is Chasselas, a white grape, and the growers credit its ripeness to “three suns”: the sun itself, its reflection off the lake and the warmth stored in the walls. The villages — Lutry, Cully, Epesses, Rivaz, Saint-Saphorin — are clusters of stone houses and steep lanes among the vines, with cellars where the growers pour their own wine, and the two grands crus of Lavaux, Calamin and Dézaley, come from the slopes around Epesses.

Vevey lies on the shore where Lavaux ends, looking across the water to the Dents du Midi. Charlie Chaplin lived at the Manoir de Ban in Corsier-sur-Vevey, above the town, from 1953 until his death in 1977, and the house and a studio of sets from his films now make up Chaplin's World; he is buried in Corsier's cemetery, and his statue stands on Vevey's quay. Nestlé has its headquarters in the town, and its Alimentarium, a museum of food, has a giant fork standing in the lake in front of it. A funicular climbs through the vines to Mont-Pèlerin, and about once in a generation the Fête des Vignerons, the winegrowers' festival, fills the market square.

Montreux spreads along the shore near the eastern end of the lake, sheltered by the mountains behind it, and its quays, planted with palms and flowers, run past Belle Époque hotels toward Chillon. Freddie Mercury's statue looks over the water from the Place du Marché; Queen owned Mountain Studios in the Casino and recorded there for years. The Casino itself was rebuilt after the fire of 1971, during a Frank Zappa concert, that Deep Purple turned into “Smoke on the Water”. From the station, a rack railway climbs through Glion to the Rochers-de-Naye, just over 2,000 metres up, with the lake spread out below.

The Château de Chillon stands on a rock in the lake between Montreux and Villeneuve, joined to the shore by a short bridge. It grew under the house of Savoy as the stronghold of the narrow road between the lake and the mountains, and its courtyards, great halls, chapel and keep are visited from the vaulted cellars upward. In those cellars François Bonivard was chained to a pillar for years in the 16th century; Lord Byron came in 1816 and made him the hero of “The Prisoner of Chillon”, and the name “Byron” is carved into one of the pillars. The lakeside path from Montreux reaches the castle in about 3 kilometres, and the lake boats and the shore bus stop there too.

Up the Rhône valley from the lake, Aigle is the gateway to the Vaud Alps: its castle stands among vineyards and houses a museum of wine, and mountain railways leave from its station. A rack railway climbs to Leysin, on a sunny shelf facing the Dents du Midi, and another line runs up the Ormonts valley to Les Diablerets, where cable cars from the Col du Pillon reach the glacier at nearly 3,000 metres and a suspension bridge spans two summits. Villars-sur-Ollon, on its own terrace, is reached by rack railway from Bex. All three are ski resorts in winter and walking bases in summer.

From Montreux, a narrow-gauge railway climbs behind the lake into the Pays-d'Enhaut, the upper valley of the Sarine, and runs on to Gstaad in the canton of Bern. Château-d'Oex, the valley's main village, is a centre of hot-air ballooning, with an international balloon festival every January, and of papercutting, the local craft of cut-paper silhouettes shown in the Musée du Pays-d'Enhaut. The summer pastures give L'Etivaz, a mountain cheese made in the alpine chalets over wood fires. At Montbovon, a branch line leaves for Gruyères in the canton of Fribourg.

West of Lausanne, La Côte is the vineyard shore that runs below the Jura to Nyon. Morges has a lakeside castle of the house of Savoy that holds military museums, and a park on the shore that fills with tulips every spring. Nyon began as a colony Julius Caesar founded for his veterans: its Roman museum is built into the foundations of the Roman basilica, Roman columns stand on a terrace above the lake, and the castle over the old town holds the town's museum. Every July the Paléo Festival, an open-air music festival, sets up on the edge of Nyon, and boats cross from its harbour to Yvoire, a walled medieval village on the French shore.

High in the Jura along the French border, the Vallée de Joux is a valley of spruce woods and pasture around the Lac de Joux, and one of the heartlands of Swiss watchmaking: watch manufactures work in Le Sentier and Le Brassus, and the Espace Horloger in Le Sentier tells the valley's story. In winter the valley is cross-country skiing country. The same craft carries on further north, in the canton of Neuchâtel, in the watchmaking towns of Le Locle and La Chaux-de-Fonds. Closer to the lake, a narrow-gauge line climbs from Nyon to Saint-Cergue and the high pastures of the Jura, and at the foot of the range Romainmôtier gathers around a Romanesque abbey church built by the monks of Cluny around the year 1000.

At the southern end of Lake Neuchâtel, Yverdon-les-Bains is a spa town whose thermal baths draw on warm mineral springs, with a castle of the house of Savoy by its old town and the Maison d'Ailleurs, a museum of science fiction. A few kilometres up the shore, the Château de Grandson rises from the water's edge. To the east, in the Broye, Payerne keeps a great Romanesque abbey church of the 11th century, and Avenches stands on Aventicum, the capital of the Helvetii under Rome: its amphitheatre, below a medieval tower that holds the Roman museum, is still a summer stage for open-air concerts, and a single column of a temple, the Cigognier, stands in the fields.