Veytaux

Believe it or not, the Castle of Chillon is not situated in Montreux, but in Veytaux, the only village that refused to join the new Commune of Montreux back in 1962.

At the bottom of the valley of La Veraye, a torrent as fast as a funnel, the oldest part of the village of Veytaux was built sixty metres above the lake.

Away from the main traffic, with its narrow streets and old houses full of nobility, it bears witness to a rich past, often conditioned by the proximity of Chillon Castle.

Although it had always belonged to the same parish as its neighbours, in 1961 the Municipality of Veytaux refused to join Les Planches and Le Châtelard in the larger Municipality of Montreux, which was formed by their merger on 1 January 1962.

The municipal territory resembles a narrow scarf stretching over the summit of the Rochers-de-Naye (2041.9 m) and dipping its ends in the waters of the Hongrin and Lake Geneva. While Veytaux shares the highest point in the region with Villeneuve, the hotel and the Combe de Naye belong to it alone.

Veytaux is also home to the fortress of Chillon, one of Switzerland's most popular monuments (300,000 visitors a year).

The 2,200 m long motorway viaduct, built between 1966 and 1969 and supported above Chillon by slender pillars 30 m to 60 m high, is a remarkable structure that in the end does not destroy the landscape as it traces its long, elegant curve around the mountainside.

In the last century, the Hôtel Masson was home to the historian Jules Michelet, while Edgar Quinet, another of Napoleon III's outlaws, lived in Veytaux for twelve years until the fall of the Second Empire.