Montreux

Where it sits. Montreux occupies the north-eastern corner of Lake Geneva, where the lake narrows toward the Rhône valley and the mountains close in on both sides. The town is built on a steep amphitheatre of slopes running down to the water, with the Rochers-de-Naye at 2,042 metres directly behind it and the Dents du Midi visible across the water to the south-east. Because the mountains block the north wind and the lake stores summer heat, the shoreline here has a climate several degrees milder than its altitude and latitude suggest: palms, magnolias, cypresses and even bananas grow along the quay, and the vineyard terraces of Lavaux — a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2007 — run west from the town almost to Lausanne.

The story behind it. Montreux is not one village but a fused string of them — Clarens, Vernex, Territet, Veytaux — that grew together in the second half of the nineteenth century when the railway arrived and British and Russian invalids began wintering here on medical advice. The Belle Époque hotel boom followed: the Montreux Palace, designed by Eugène Jost, opened in 1906 and still dominates the front with its glazed dining room and grey mansards. The town's later reinvention was cultural. Claude Nobs, a local tourist-office employee, founded the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1967 in the casino ballroom; it now runs for a fortnight in early July across several stages and is the second-largest jazz festival in the world, though the programming long ago spread far beyond jazz.

The most famous fire in rock music. On 4 December 1971, during a Frank Zappa concert, someone in the audience fired a flare into the rattan ceiling of the Casino de Montreux and the building burned to the ground. Deep Purple were booked to record in the same complex the following week using the Rolling Stones' mobile studio; they watched the smoke drift across the water from their hotel and wrote "Smoke on the Water" about it, naming the town, the casino and Claude Nobs in the lyrics. Queen bought Mountain Studios, rebuilt inside the new casino, in 1979 and worked there for the rest of Freddie Mercury's life; the last sessions that became Made in Heaven were recorded here in 1991. Irena Sedlecká's bronze statue of Mercury was unveiled on the Place du Marché in 1996, facing the lake, and the studio itself reopened in 2013 as a small free exhibition.

On screen. Montreux's cinematic weight comes from exile. Charlie Chaplin, refused re-entry to the United States in 1952 while crossing the Atlantic, settled six kilometres west of here at the Manoir de Ban above Corsier-sur-Vevey in 1953 and lived there for the rest of his life, dying on Christmas Day 1977. He made A King in New York (1957) and A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) from that base, wrote his autobiography there, and is buried in the village cemetery; the house opened to the public as a museum in 2016 and his statue stands on Vevey's quay a short train ride along the shore. Vladimir Nabokov took a suite at the Montreux Palace in 1961 and stayed sixteen years until his death in 1977, writing Ada and Transparent Things there — he had completed the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick's Lolita the year before he arrived, and received sole screen credit for it even though Kubrick rewrote most of the shooting script. A bronze of Nabokov sits outside the hotel. One thing Montreux did not host: Bohemian Rhapsody (2018) recreated Mountain Studios in detail, but the film was shot in England, not here.

What you actually see today. The core of a visit is the flower promenade, a continuous landscaped waterfront path running about seven kilometres from Vevey through Clarens and Montreux to Chillon Castle, planted with subtropical species and studded with sculpture. Walking the Montreux–Chillon section takes forty minutes and is level and paved throughout. Above the town, the Rochers-de-Naye cog railway has climbed from Montreux station since 1892, gaining 1,600 metres in under an hour to a summit with an alpine garden, marmot enclosure and a view down the whole length of the lake. The GoldenPass panoramic line runs the other way toward Gstaad and the Bernese Oberland. In December the lakefront hosts one of Switzerland's largest Christmas markets.

Getting there and timing. Montreux is on the main line from Geneva (about seventy minutes) and Lausanne (twenty-five), with CGN paddle steamers calling at the pier in season. The jazz festival in early July fills every bed within thirty kilometres and doubles hotel rates, so book far ahead or come deliberately outside it. May, June and September give warm lake swimming, open mountain railways and a promenade you can actually walk.