Museum of fine arts, Lausanne

Abstract

Lausanne is an unexpected city, perched on a steep hillside overlooking Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). Archeologists have found traces of hearths and carved flint near the lake at Vidy that are 8,000 years old. More than 200 graves found near the lake date from between 4300 and 3300 BC, attesting to the presence of villages nearby. The same area, near Vidy, was later the location of a Roman military camp. Called Lousonna, it was built on the site of a Celtic Helvetian settlement, after the victory of Julius Caesar at Bibracte (58 BC). The Romans remained in the area until the beginning of the fifth century AD when western Switzerland came under Burgundian influence. The dominance of the Germanic Allamani tribes to the east explains the linguistic division of the country that still exists today. Not long after the eclipse of the Romans, the town became an episcopate at the end of the sixth century, presided over as of 1011 by a prince-bishop of the Holy Roman Empire supported by the kings of Burgundy. By the thirteenth century, Lausanne had approximately 9,000 inhabitants. The largest Gothic cathedral in Switzerland was consecrated there on October 20, 1275, by Pope Gregory X in the presence of Emperor Rudolf of Habsburg and remains today in slightly altered form in its original location. The Protestant Reformation in Switzerland began to take hold in Zurich under the leadership of Huldrych Zwingli in the 1520s, with Bern following in 1528. Bern, which signed alliances with Lausanne (1525) and Geneva (1526), embarked on an expansionist policy that led them to occupy Vaud in 1536, imposing Protestantism as the local religion and making the Cathedral Protestant. In the same year the forces of the Reformation and the Bernese army stripped the Cathedral of most of its decoration, including altars, statues, and paintings. Certain elements, such as the magnificent rose window (1231-35) and the so-called Painted Portal restored in 2014, both on the south side of the edifice, retain something of the splendor of the original building. The conversion of Lausanne and its Cathedral to Protestantism is more than a matter of historical detail. The austerity imposed by the Bernese and the continuing Protestantism of the Canton are an important element in understanding contemporary choices and the appearance of architecture in the city. After 1536, Catholic authorities were made to flee, and it was in 1613 that Fribourg became the seat of the bishop of Lausanne. Fribourg is still the seat of the Diocese of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg, underlining the lasting conversion to Protestantism of Lausanne. Subsequent to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), Lausanne and Geneva were places of refuge for the French Huguenots, and a seminary created by Antoine Court and Benjamin Du Plan in 1729 was active until 1808. In the context of revolt against the long domination of Bern, Lausanne became the capital of the Canton du Leman also known as the Pays de Vaud in 1798, as part of the Republique Helvetique created by Napoleon Bonaparte. Vaud became part of the Swiss Confederation on April 14, 1803. Particularly since the eighteenth century, Lausanne has been a place of predilection for a number of important cultural figures. Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived in the city from July to November 1730, while Voltaire sojourned at Montriond and Grand-Chene between 1755 and 1759. Edward Gibbon, author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, completed his opus in Lausanne between 1783 and 1787. Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron came to Lausanne during a tour of the lake in June 1816, and Byron wrote the poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" at the Hotel de l’Ancre (now Hotel et Residence d'Angleterre) in Ouchy, on June 28. The Cathedral was the reason for the presence in Lausanne of Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, who was commissioned by the Conseil d'Etat Vaudois to restore the edifice in 1873. Still working on the project, he died in Lausanne in 1879.