Lausanne Things to Do

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Built built it between 1673 and 1675 according to the plans of the Lausanne architect Abraham de Crousaz, Hotel-de-Ville – the Town Hall has been the pivotal point of civic life in Lausanne since that time. Greatly admired since its creation, the Town Hall is the most interesting example of the 17th century Vaud architecture. Unique decorative elements of the building are two remarkable iron forged gargoyles.

The Town Hall served several functions: politically – it was both the home and symbol of the city's power; economically – the halls of its ground floor housed the wheat market; defensively – the bells of its belfry warned of danger.

In 1766, in this building, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at the age of ten, gave two concerts.

Ground floor of the Town Hall – the passage connecting Place de la Palud and Place de la Louve, is still the market, not wheat market anymore, but one with many different stuff including Lausanne and Vaud souvenirs.

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The striking 16th century Fontaine de la Justice – the Justice Fountain is located at the upper part of Place de la Palud. The vividly coloured statue of Justice on the top of the pillar was carved by Laurent Perroud between 1584 and 1585, and completed, after his death, by his son Jacques Perroud. Almost identical statue of Justice, typically depicted as a blindfolded young woman bearing a sword and scales, with four figures at her feet symbolizing the various forms of government: a pope, a magistrate, an emperor and a sultan, Laurent Perroud carved 40 years earlier for the fountain in his home-town – Neuchatel. The splendid spouts were casted between 1557 and 1559. The dodecagonal basin was built in 1726.

The pillar and the statue are copies, created in 1930. The originals are held in the Lausanne History Museum.

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Chateau Saint-Maire, built between 1397 and 1427, was originally the Bishop's Palace. It is it is probably designed by the Italian craftsmen who came at the invitation of Bishop of Lausanne Guillaume de Challant. Between 1536 and 1798, under Bernese rule, it subsequently became the residence of the bailiffs. In the last decade of the 19th century the general restoration of castle was undertaken. The restoration had been led by the Swiss, Vevey-born architect Eugene Jost.

Since 1803 Chateau Saint-Maire is the home of the Conseil d'Etat – State Council, which governs the Canton of Vaud. The castle is not open for public, so just its massive exterior can be admired.

Standing against the facade of Chateau Saint-Maire, there is the Monument of Major Jean Daniel Abraham Davel, one of the heroes of Vaud history. This Vaudois patriot attempted to liberate the region of Vaud, which at that time was held by the Bernese. Betrayed by his own people, he was beheaded in Vidy, on the shores of Lake Geneva, in 1723. The monument, artwork of J. Maurice Reymond de Broutelles, Swiss sculptor, painter, and engraver, was unveiled at the ceremony held on the 14th of November 1898.

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Church Saint Francois dominates the square of the same name. Located at lower end of Grand Pont, sharply between Gare centrale de Lausanne – Lausanne central railway station and Cathedrale Notre-Dame, with city bus station for several lines – the square is one of the most prominent places in the city. Together with the cathedral, the church is the only medieval religious building in Lausanne.

Here are some facts about Saint Francois church from the leaflet we picked in it: "Franciscan monks settled in Lausanne in the year 1258. Bishop Jean of Cossonay had summoned them from Besancon and Salins to found a new community. They were immediately granted a piece of land, upon which they built their convent and church. The exact dates of the construction of the church remain unknown, however we do know that the main work was finished around 1272. The church of Saint-Francois was built according to the rules set up at the Franciscan Synod of Narbonne, under the ruling of Saint Bonaventure, It is quite typical of the 13th century buildings of the mendicant orders who were so rapidly developing throughout the Western world during that period. […] Around 1368, a fire destroyed Lausanne, including the sanctuary of the Franciscan Friars. The vaulted choir survived, but not so the nave and its wooden roof. Reconstruction was done stepwise during the last third of the 14th century. […] The architect responsible for this reconstruction was Jean of Liege. […] In the beginning of the 15th century, a bell tower was added and in the late 15th or early 16th century the rood-loft was demolished and replaced by the present pulpit. In 1536, Reformation was established: it was in the church of Saint- Francois that Pierre Viret preached return to the Gospel. Shortly after, convents were abolished by the Reformation Act and Saint-Francois became the parish church of the low city. Today, it still is the center of that neighborhood's reformed parish. From the end of 19th century on, Saint-Francois was restored and consolidated several times. The disfiguring aisles added during the 17th and the 18th centuries were removed in 1930. […] The restoration carried out between 1990 and 1995 […] was aimed at respecting the passage of time, but above all at enhancing the painted decorative elements preserved inside the church of Saint-Francois. The choir vaults are decorated with white on beige 'false-joints' and those of the first bay have kept their 15th century arms. On the other vaults of the nave, one can admire the exceptional black and white decoration dating back to the beginning of the 17th century, as well as the adjoining walls coated in matching gray pointed with white. Thus, it is at the end of the 20th century that this sanctuary of Lausanne recovered its architectural unity."

The church has very unusual and spooky automatic door, but this should not stop anyone to enter it and see the interior, it should just prevent slightly disturbing (but later funny) experience. The door of Eglise Saint-Francois surprised VT member Sue, too – what a relief to share such a strange occurrence with somebody.

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Excellent Wikitravel Lausanne article says about Palace Rumine: "This lovely building is not as old as it looks". This seems to be the very appropriate beginning of the tip about one of the most appealing and most important edifices in Lausanne, the one which houses Cantonal and University Library and five museums – Musee cantonal des beaux-arts, Musee cantonal de geologie, Musee cantonal de zoologie, Musee cantonal d'archaeologie et d'historie, and Musee monetaire cantonal!!! This building was not there in the first years of the 20th century!

Palace Rumine is endowment of Gabriel de Rumine, the Lausanne born aristocrat of Russian origin, who left 1,500,000 francs to the City of Lausanne for the construction of a building for public use. French architect Gaspard Andre won the architecture contest organized in 1889, with a purpose to fulfill Rumine's will. The vast edifice, reminiscence of Florentine Renaissance architecture, was completed in 1906.

To be continued in "The Museums in Palace Rumine"…

[…] Impressive erotic art of Lausanne born Aloise Corbaz, consisting primarily of beautiful women attended by lovers in military uniform, was included in Jean Dubuffet's initial collection of psychiatric art. Aloise's inability to fulfill her career and love desires led her into schizophrenia and she was hospitalized in 1920. In hospital she started drawing and writing poetry in secret; director of the hospital and general practitioner first took an interest in 1936, and her work was finally discovered by Dubuffet in 1947. She used the vivid colors of crayons, pencils, and flower juice to fill entire sheets of paper. Her work is among the most famous displayed in the Art Brut Collection.

Italian Carlo spent 27 years in psychiatric hospital in Verona, since the age of 29 until his death. His magnificently strong art is "a sort of symbolic reply to the systematic dehumanization to which he had been subjected".

Frenchman Augustin Lesage was praised by the Surrealists. Born in 1876, at age of 7, he lost his younger sister, and 28 years later he heard at the bottom of the mine, frightened, a voice telling him: "One day you will be painter." After that he involved in Spiritualism and produced some 800 works as the medium-painter. Convinced that he was not the author of the paintings he had been executing, he had attributed them to his sister Marie, Leonardo da Vinci, Apollonius of Tyana and later to an unknown Egyptian painter whose reincarnation he had believed to be. His beautiful, meticulous painted geometric compositions are among the treasures of the collection.

Nek Chand is one of the rare Art Brut authors who received recognition and fame during his life. Recently purchased sculptures from his stupendous undertaking called "The Rock Garden of Chandigarh" are among the most attractive exhibits of the Art Brut Collection in Lausanne.

Some of the other authors whose works are in the Art Brut Collection are Emile Ratier, Emile Josome Hodinos and Marguerite Sirvins from France, Italian Eugenio Santoro, Baya from Algeria, Dutch Willem van Genk, Madge Gill from England, Serbian Jovan Radovic, Scottie Wilson from Scotland…

The Art Brut Collection is seen by nearly 40,000 visitors every year. In parallel to its permanent collection, temporary exhibitions are organized as well.

At the entrance to the Collection de l'Art Brut – the Art Brut Collection visitors face the words of French artist Jean Dubuffet: "Art does not come and lie down at the beds that have been made for it; it runs away as soon as anyone utters its name: what it likes is being incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what it is called". Art Brut is the term created by Dubuffet to describe art of self-taught creators who have eluded cultural conditioning and social conformity and remained outside the boundaries of official culture. Art Brut includes the art of prisoners, inmates of psychiatric hospitals, eccentrics, loners, misfits, outcasts… Eager to ensure a public and permanent status for his collection of Art Brut, Jean Dubuffet offered it to the city of Lausanne in 1971. The Art Brut Collection was inaugurated at the Chateau de Beaulieu in 1976.

Nowadays the Art Brut Collection possess about 35,000 pieces. Some of the creators of the works presented in this collection achieved a world-wide fame, the others are hardly known about…

Henry Darger become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story. Many of his massive compositions created by tracing images from popular magazines and children's books, with characteristic and very strange appearance of girls with penises, are the part of permanent collection, and they are exhibited in separate room.

Misfit Vojislav Jakic spend all of his life in Despotovac, Serbia, living in poverty, but never stopped drawing. His stunning huge drawings are important part of the collection. For the complete insight in the most of his works it is necessary to read Cyrillic and to know Serbian language, because a bitter messages, essential for the understanding of his art, are written all over his drawings.

To be continued in PART II…

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[…] "A place of dreams, the Olympic Museum is set in a beautifully maintained park. Bounded by a unique landscape where the waters of Lake Geneva meet an infinite sky, it is an oasis of tranquility and culture. […]" The description of the Olympic Park in the leaflet guide could hardly be better. The only explanation needed is about the park being "oasis of culture" – vast part of the Museum's permanent collection of sculptures on a sport theme is exhibited in the park or on the terraces of the Museum building.

Probably the most attractive sculpture is magnificent, large-scale kinetic torso called "Citius Altius Fortius" (the Olympic motto, Latin for "Swifter, Higher, Stronger"), artwork of Miguel Ortiz y Berrocal, created in 1992. Among the others are charming, colorful "Footballers", by Niki de Saint Phalle completed in 1993, Fernando Botero's "Girl With the Ball" from 1989, Igor Mitoraj's sculptural tribute to the cradles of civilization Greece and Italy called "Porta Italica" from 1997, witty "Olympia" – the three cyclists forming the Olympic circles from the wheels of their bicycles, by Gabor Mihaly, created in 1993…

Besides the works of art, in the Park are the Olympic Flame, a square meter of Barcelona Olympic's village sidewalk…

The Olympic Park is, simply – the enchanting place.

To be continued in "Paavo Nurmi, Drazen Petrovic, Emil Zatopek"…