Chateau de Chillon

No, Romania did not satisfy my craving for castles.

Chateau de Chillon, near Montreux and on the far side of Lac Leman from Geneva, was touted to me as Switzerland's best castle. It's built on a little island just off the lake shore, and it is a honestly, truly, wouldn't be out of place in a fairy tale medieval style castle.

It still took me almost twenty months of living in Switzerland to go visit. My bad. But a couple weeks ago I had a friend visiting and the desire to be a silly tourist, and so hopping on the train and chatting two-thirds of the way around the lake sounded like a lovely way to spend the day. It helped that it was a totally gorgeous fall day. Switzerland is a beautiful country.

So, the castle. The first written records of the castle are about 1000 years old; the castle consists of many different buildings on the island that were merged over its history. It was a residence of the Dukes of Savoy as they traveled around the area until they were conquered by the Bernese in 1536. They used it to house the bailiff of the region for two centuries, when it served as governmental house and prison. In 1798, the Vaud revolution turned the castle over to the canton, but didn't do much with it. It became much more known and popular after Lord Byron wrote the poem "The Prisoner of Chillon" about Bonivard who had been imprisoned there, and it became a tourist destination. So the castle was never actually besieged.
It is still clearly a fortress, though; the land-facing windows are all tiny slits, while the water-facing ones are much bigger. I had great fun wandering through the courtyards and corridors as they ran every which way. It had secret passages, a couple towers, a dungeon . . . my little brothers would have loved it. We didn't get to see all of it, though; some of the rooms were closed for some event.

It also had a totally appropriate temporary exhibit on witches set up in parallel to the main tour. I had fun trying to read all the French labels and working on my accent. There was also a lot of staring out the windows at the lake. A lot of staring at the lake.


Can you blame me?