Private Transfers from Zurich Airport to Lausanne

Lausanne’s topography is its defining physical characteristic. The city is built on three hills converging on a valley where the Flon River was channelled underground in the 19th century. The resulting landscape, with streets that climb at steep gradients, staircases between levels, and viewpoints at unexpected elevations above the lake, gives the city a kinetic energy that flat Swiss cities lack. The Romans established a port at Vidy, where the IOC’s Vidy campus now sits, and the medieval city developed uphill from this foundation across the following centuries.

The Cathedral of Notre Dame, the finest Gothic cathedral in Switzerland, sits at the highest point of the old city and can be seen from Ouchy and from the lake, 150 metres below. The cathedral is unusual in Switzerland for maintaining the medieval practice of a nightwatch, with a watchman who calls the hours from the tower between 22:00 and 02:00 every night, a tradition maintained continuously since the 13th century.

The Collection de l’Art Brut, housed in the Château de Beaulieu, is one of the most important and unusual art museums in the world, holding the collection assembled by Jean Dubuffet of work by self-taught artists, psychiatric patients, and individuals outside the mainstream art world. The collection, which Dubuffet gave to the city of Lausanne in 1971, has no equivalent anywhere and is one of the genuinely irreplaceable museum experiences in Switzerland.

The Ouchy lakefront below the city, connected to the centre by the M2 metro funicular, is the leisure spine of Lausanne, with the Olympic Museum, the Château d’Ouchy hotel, the rowing clubs, and the lake swimming areas forming a continuous promenade above the water. The view across Lake Geneva from Ouchy to the French Alps on a clear day, with Mont Blanc visible 100 kilometres to the south-east, is among the most rewarding urban views in Switzerland.