Two weeks each July when jazz drifts across Lake Geneva after dark.
Geneva Region Montreux
Montreux
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Plan your trip
A handcrafted itinerary for Montreux.
SleepFind your stay
A short, curated list. None of them a chain.
GuidesFollow a route
Hand-curated, walked before written.
Montreux lies on a sheltered curve of Lake Geneva's northern shore, in the French-speaking canton of Vaud. The bay faces south and the mountains close in behind it, creating a microclimate mild enough for palm trees and magnolias to grow outdoors through the winter, unusual for a country better known for snow.
A flower-lined promenade runs along the water, past the bronze statue of Freddie Mercury, who recorded here and spent his final years in the town. Above the shore, the old town's cobbled streets climb toward the 15th-century church of Saint-Vincent.
Things worth slowing down for
A few of our favourite spots in Montreux.
What makes Montreux slow travel perfect
Montreux is built around a contradiction: snow on the peaks across the lake, palm trees on the promenade below. The bay faces south and the mountains behind block the wind, so magnolias, camellias and cypress grow outdoors year-round, a rarity this far from the Mediterranean. The grand hotels along the lakefront date from the Belle Époque, when European aristocracy first came for the mild winters.
The Montreux Jazz Festival, founded in 1967, fills the town for two weeks every July. Outside those weeks, the promenade returns to what it was built for: an unhurried walk between water and mountain, past rose beds and the bronze statue of Freddie Mercury, who recorded at the Mountain Studios inside the old Casino and spent his final years here.
Two routes lead out of town, in opposite directions. The cogwheel railway to Rochers-de-Naye climbs more than 1,600 metres in under an hour, trading lake views for alpine ones and ending near an alpine garden of over 1,000 species. Chillon Castle sits three kilometres along the shore, on a rocky islet it has occupied for close to a thousand years; it is the most visited historic monument in Switzerland, and Lord Byron wrote his dungeon poem after visiting it. Above the town, the vineyard terraces of Lavaux, Switzerland's largest contiguous wine region and a UNESCO World Heritage site, climb toward the horizon.
There is no wrong way to spend a day in Montreux. A slow walk along the water covers most of what matters.