Montreux Travel Guide

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Introduction

by Frommers Travel Guides

3km (2 miles) E of Vevey; 24km (15 miles) E of Lausanne; 100km (62 miles) E of Geneva

The chief resort of the Swiss Riviera, Montreux rises in the shape of an amphitheater from the shores of Lac Léman. An Edwardian town with a distinct French accent, it has long been a refuge for expatriates, including the novelist Vladimir Nabokov. Known for its balmy climate, it sports a profusion of Mediterranean vegetation, which grows lushly in the town's many lakeside parks. The mountains at the town's back protect it from the winds of winter, allowing fruit trees, cypresses, magnolias, bay trees, almonds, and even palms to flourish.

The city has expanded greatly from its original 19th-century core, incorporating several former villages along the shoreline. One of these, Clarens, was used by Rousseau as the setting for his epistolary novel La nouvelle Héloïse. The resort enjoyed its heyday in the years just before World War I, when it had only 85 hotel beds. It hosted such distinguished visitors as Tolstoy, Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, and Ruskin. In recent times the town has revived, and today about three-fourths of the resort's 20,000 inhabitants are engaged in some touristic capacity or another.

Though the resort is favored year-round, it's most densely crowded in summertime, when traffic clogs most of the streets.

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Montreux Travel Experiences

On to Switzerland

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by Real Traveler smcgovern
Montreux, the Jazz Festival

We got on the three hour train to Montreux hoping for an exciting weekend of music and fun. We weren't disappointed.When we got to Montre... Continue reading »

by Real Traveler Kyle
Photos from Lausanne, Switzerland

Hello All,I have attached some photos from Lausanne. It is located approximately 50 kilometers from Geneva. I ended up going into G... Continue reading »

by Real Traveler Rose - Europe 2006
HR Giger Museum

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by Real Traveler Anna D
5. Dijon to Geneva

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by Real Traveler Clare and Paul