Lausanne; Sunday, 09 October, 2022

After a bit of a lie in and a relaxed breakfast I checked out of the hotel and headed over to the tram stop to catch the tram to the edge of the city centre and the location of the original Roman settlement of Lousonna, which was located down on the banks of the lake, a couple of miles West of where the city centre is today.

Quite a bit of the remains were only discovered when they were building a motorway through the area in the 1960’s including a complete mosaic which is now protected from the elements in it’s own little shelter, but visible to look at from the pavement. Across the road are the main part of the remains, representing some of the more civic buildings of the city including a temple and a basilica. A lot of the rest of the remains are under neighbouring buildings.

An example of this is a short walk away at the Musée romain de Lausanne-Vidy, which houses artefacts from the site, as well as other parts of the ruins around the building and on the ground floor. I spent a little while looking round the museum before heading back to the bus stop to catch the bus back along to Ouchy at the bottom end of the metro.

I caught the metro up a couple of stops and walked the short distance along to the Jardin Botanique de Lausanne, the city’s small botanical gardens to have a wander round there, before hopping on another bus and heading back into the city centre to grab some lunch.

After lunch I walked the short distance over to the Musée Historique Lausanne and spent quite a bit of time looking round their permanent exhibition on the history of the town. Whilst there is a little bit on the very earliest of settlements the main focus is on the period from the construction of the old town around the Cathedral in the Middle Ages onwards, including a very impressive model of the medieval city centre which is used as part of an audio visual presentation.

Part of the museum is housed in one of the oldest buildings in the city, and it was interesting how they managed to weave the narrative of the museum into the fabric of both the modern extension and the ancient city building.

From the museum it was a short walk up the hill to the very top of the ridge that the heart of the old town was built around and the Château St-Maire, still used as part of the local government, so not open to the public, but from the square there were some good views back over the city and the lake.

I walked back down through the old town and used the Palais de Rumine as a cut through to save off on the steep inclines down as I made my way back to the hotel to pick up my bag before heading back down to the station to catch my train back to Geneva and my flight home.