Lake Geneva
Switzerland's largest lake, vine-covered along its north shore.
- Elevation
- 396 m
- Nearest station
- Montreux
A lake shared with France
Lake Geneva, Lac Léman in French, is one of the largest lakes in western Europe, a crescent up to 73km long shared between Switzerland, which holds about 60 percent of its surface across the cantons of Geneva, Vaud and Valais, and France, which holds the rest along Haute-Savoie. It is not, for most of its length, a mountain lake in the way Lake Lucerne or Lake Thun are: the scenery takes on an Alpine character only at the eastern end, between Vevey and Villeneuve, and the north shore falls in gentle vine-covered slopes set with villages and castles rather than in peaks rising straight from the water.
Lavaux and the eastern shore
Between Lausanne and Montreux, the shore steepens into the Lavaux, about 830 hectares of vine terraces that trace back to the eleventh century, when Benedictine and Cistercian monasteries controlled the area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2007 and, in UNESCO’s words, an outstanding example of a centuries-long interaction between people and their environment. The mountains proper only appear at the eastern end of the lake: above Montreux, the Rochers de Naye (2,042m) are reached by a rack railway whose upper section opened in 1892, and behind Villeneuve, where the lake finally gives way to the Rhône valley, the Dents du Midi (3,257m) close the view to the south.
Walking and access
Walking directly on the lakeshore is level and unhurried, through vineyards and lakeside villages rather than mountain terrain. The more serious walking is a train ride away rather than on the doorstep: Rochers de Naye from Montreux, or the Vaudois Alps proper a little further inland toward Villars and Les Diablerets. The main line from Geneva to Lausanne, Vevey and Montreux runs along the Swiss north shore, and the Montreux Oberland Bernois line, the one marketed as GoldenPass, climbs away from Montreux into the hills behind. In the Lavaux, the UNESCO site’s Route des Grands Crus, about 3km, starts at either Épesses or Rivaz, and the RER Vaud runs through the vineyards.