Chillon Castle

Chillon occupies a small, steep-sided oval of limestone that pushes out into the eastern end of Lake Geneva, between Montreux and Villeneuve. The position explains everything about it: the narrow shore here is the doorway from the Vaud Riviera into the Rhône valley and on towards the Great Saint Bernard Pass, so whoever held the rock could watch the road to Italy and collect tolls from everyone using it. The name is usually traced to a dialect word for a flat stone platform, and a charter of 1150 already shows the site in the hands of the House of Savoy.

What stands today grew around an 11th-century square keep. Count Peter II of Savoy enlarged it heavily in 1248 and 1266–67, and the elegant windows of that phase are credited to Master James of Saint George, the builder later sent to Wales to work on Harlech. Chillon was a summer seat for the Savoy counts, who kept a lake fleet here, but also a prison. Its best-known inmate, the Genevan prior François Bonivard, spent six years in the vaulted cellars from 1530 until a Bernese army took the castle in 1536 and freed him. Bern then used Chillon as a bailiff's residence until 1798, when Vaud threw off Bernese rule; under the new canton it became an arsenal.

The castle owes its excellent condition to one of the earliest scientific restorations in Europe. From the late 1880s the archaeologist-architect Albert Naef spent some twenty years studying the building, and replacement stones were marked with letters or painted lines so that original and new work could always be told apart. Romantic visitors had long since made the place famous: Byron's poem The Prisoner of Chillon (1816) turned Bonivard into a legend, a signature on the third pillar of the dungeon is traditionally attributed to Byron himself, though its authenticity is doubted, and Delacroix, Courbet and Turner all painted or sketched the castle. Inside, visitors walk through great halls, courtyards and residential rooms, including the Camera domini with 14th-century wall paintings. Chillon now belongs to the canton of Vaud and draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year.

Getting there

Chillon lies on the lakeshore in Veytaux, about 2.4 km from the centre of Montreux. Veytaux-Chillon station on the Simplon line is a few minutes' walk from the gate, buses run along the shore from Montreux, Vevey and Villeneuve, and lake boats on the Lausanne route call at the castle; there is also a car park. The nearest airport is Bern Airport (BRN), about 71 km away as the crow flies, but it has few flights; most visitors fly into Geneva Airport (GVA), about 66 km away, and continue by train along the lake.