1.
Lausanne
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Lausanne is a city in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, and the capital and biggest city of the canton of Vaud. The city is situated on the shores of Lake Geneva and it faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura Mountains to its north-west. Lausanne is located 62 kilometres northeast of Geneva, Lausanne has a population of 146,372, making it the fourth largest city in Switzerland, with the entire agglomeration area having 420,000 inhabitants. The metropolitan area of Lausanne-Geneva was over 1.2 million inhabitants in 2000, Lausanne is a focus of international sport, hosting the International Olympic Committee, the Court of Arbitration for Sport and some 55 international sport associations. It lies in a noted wine-growing region, the city has a 28-station metro system, making it the smallest city in the world to have a rapid transit system. Lausanne will host the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics, by the 2nd century AD it was known as vikanor Lousonnensium and in 280 as lacu Lausonio. By 400 it was civitas Lausanna and in 990 it was mentioned as Losanna, after the fall of the Roman Empire, insecurity forced the transfer of Lausanne to its current centre, a hilly site that is easier to defend. The city which emerged from the camp was ruled by the Dukes of Savoy, then it came under Bern from 1536 to 1798 and a number of its cultural treasures, including the hanging tapestries in the Cathedral, were permanently removed. Lausanne has made a number of requests to recover them, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Lausanne became a place of refuge for French Huguenots. In 1729 a seminary was opened by Antoine Court and Benjamin Duplan, by 1750 ninety pastors had been sent back to France to work clandestinely, this number would rise to four hundred. Official persecution ended in 1787, a faculty of Protestant theology was established at Montauban in 1808, during the Napoleonic Wars, the citys status changed. In 1803, it became the capital of a newly formed Swiss canton, in 1964 the city hosted the Swiss National Exhibition, displaying its newly found confidence to host major international events. From the 1950s to 1970s a large number of Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese immigrated, settling mostly in the district of Renens. The city has served as a refuge for European artists, while under the care of a psychiatrist at Lausanne, T. S. Eliot composed most of his 1922 poem The Wasteland. Hemingway also visited from Paris with his wife during the 1920s, in fact, many creative people - such as Edward Gibbon, an historian, and Romantic era poets Shelley and Byron - have sojourned, lived, and worked in Lausanne or nearby. The city has been quiet, but in the late 1960s. Later demonstrations took place to protest against the high cinema prices, the most important geographical feature of the area surrounding Lausanne is Lake Geneva. Lausanne boasts a dramatic panorama over the lake and the Alps, in addition to its generally southward-sloping layout, the centre of the city is the site of an ancient river, the Flon, which has been covered since the 19th century
2.
Switzerland
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Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. The establishment of the Old Swiss Confederacy dates to the medieval period, resulting from a series of military successes against Austria. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The country has a history of armed neutrality going back to the Reformation, it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815, nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to international organisations. On the European level, it is a member of the European Free Trade Association. However, it participates in the Schengen Area and the European Single Market through bilateral treaties, spanning the intersection of Germanic and Romance Europe, Switzerland comprises four main linguistic and cultural regions, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Due to its diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera. On coins and stamps, Latin is used instead of the four living languages, Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF. Zürich and Geneva have each been ranked among the top cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the former ranked second globally, according to Mercer. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, a term for the Swiss. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century. The name Switzer is from the Alemannic Schwiizer, in origin an inhabitant of Schwyz and its associated territory, the Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for Confederates, Eidgenossen, used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica. The toponym Schwyz itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German Suittes, ultimately related to swedan ‘to burn’
3.
Lausanne Cathedral
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The Cathedral of Notre Dame of Lausanne is a church situated in the city of Lausanne, in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It belongs to the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Canton of Vaud, construction of the Cathedral began as early as 1170 by an original unknown master mason. Twenty years later another master mason restarted construction until 1215, finally a third engineer, Jean Cotereel, completed the majority of the existing cathedral including a porch, and two towers, one of which is the current day belfry. The other tower was never completed, the cathedral was consecrated and dedicated to Our Lady in 1275 by Pope Gregory X, Rudolph of Habsburg, and the bishop of Lausanne at the time, Guillaume of Champvent. The medieval architect Villard de Honnecourt drew the rose window of the transept in his sketchbook in 1270. The Protestant Reformation, a movement which came from Zurich, significantly affected the Cathedral, in 1536 a new liturgical area was added to the nave and the colourful decorations inside the Cathedral were covered over. Other major restorations occurred later in the 18th and 19th century which were directed by the great French architect, during the 20th century major restorations occurred to restore the painted interior decorations as well as to restore a painted portal on the South side of the Cathedral. New organs were installed in 2003, the great pipe organ of the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Lausanne was inaugurated in December 2003. It is an instrument in the world. It took ten years to design it and it is composed of 7000 pipes and it is the first organ in the world to be designed by a designer. It is the first organ to contain all four of the principal organ styles and it is also the first organ manufactured by an American company for a European Cathedral. It cost a total of 6 million Swiss francs, took 150,000 man-hours to build and it was preceded by a Kuhn Organ from 1955 which has since been relocated to the Polish Baltic Philharmonic in Gdańsk, Poland. Guided tours of the organ are available in English, French. The Cathedral has a total of seven bells that are suspended on two floors of the belfry, the two biggest bells are located on the lower level while all the other bells are on the top level. The oldest bell dates back to 1493 while the most recent bells date back 1898, the bells are still in use today to mark the hours. Since 1405 until the present day without interruption, the city of Lausanne has maintained a lookout in the Cathedral bell tower, the lookout announces the time by yelling the hour from 10 pm to 2 am,365 days a year. The lookout cries the hour to each cardinal direction « Cest le guet, the original purpose of the lookout was to provide a warning in case of fire though it has now become a traditional function. Since 2002, the lookout is Renato Häusler
4.
Grand Council of Vaud
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The Grand Council of Vaud is the legislature of the canton of Vaud, in Switzerland. The Great Council has 150 seats, with members elected every four years, the last election was in 2012. The next election will be held on 30 April 2017, the largest groups are the PLR group, followed by the Socialist group, followed by the UDC group, and the Green group. Council of State of Vaud List of cantonal legislatures of Switzerland Grand Council of Vaud official website
5.
Lausanne Metro
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Around a quarter of the system has been used for urban rail transport since 1877, when the route between the city centre and Ouchy opened as Switzerlands first public funicular railway. The network is owned by two companies and operated by a third. Of the two operating lines, the first is a limited-capacity light rail route, while the second is an automated metro which opened on 27 October 2008. When this opened, Lausanne replaced Rennes as the smallest city in the world to have a metro system. A third line is now planned, based on the same rubber-tyred metro technology, the Lausanne-Ouchy railway, the precursor to the M2 line of the Lausanne Metro, was inaugurated in 1877 as a funicular. In 1959 the first overhaul took place by transforming the funicular into a railway under the name métro. At that time, Flon and Gare CFF stations were demolished and replaced by concrete underground equivalents, the line was however always nicknamed La Ficelle by its users due to its funicular past and circulation above ground in the greenery for more than half of its run. The line was closed to all traffic on 21 January 2006. A bus service was put into operation to replace the then-closed La Ficelle until the opening of the new metro M2 line and this service was called Métrobus, the south loop linked Ouchy to the CFF station and the north loop linked the station to Montbenon. Lausanne originally had a system that opened in 1896. But the original Lausanne tram network closed entirely in 1964, a modern tramline, which ultimately became Lausanne Métro Line M1, opened on 24 May 1991, and began revenue service on 2 June 1991. In 2001, for marketing and public communication reasons, this line was renamed the M1 line by its operator TSOL, the M1 is a light rail line with a total of 15 stations, a dozen of which are at-grade and three of which are underground. The line is owned by a company named TSOL and this acronym is used by the commuters who use the line. Trains on the line are operated by the Transports publics de la région lausannoise, the M1 is a light rail line with a dozen surface stations and three underground. The line, which is 7. 8-kilometre long, links the centre of Lausanne, the line is generally single track. At most stations a passing loop is provided to allow trains to pass, exceptions to this are Bassenges, UNIL-Sorge and Provence stations, where the line is still single track serving one bidirectional platform. Unlike the later line 2, an automated or remotely controlled train was not planned when the line opened in 1991. There are a total of 18 of these original LRVs on the line, but after 20 years in service they were showing their age, and 2 were regularly out of use
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