Scenes of Lutry, Switzerland

Dwight Peck's personal website

We've been led to believe that today's the day for the brocante market around the port.

Lutry is a small village of about 10,000 souls on the Lake Geneva shore, just 4km east of Lausanne, still charmingly medieval around the waterfront, but extending as well far up the vineyards to the north. Nearly 25% of the residents are non-Swiss nationals, about the same proportion of foreigners as in Switzerland generally.

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

The brocante market in Lutry, 5 June 2016

From the carpark just off the Route du Lac, or lake road . . .

Kristin and George proceeding down the Rue de l'Horloge (with the Horloge in its tower near the bottom of the street)

From the base of the clock tower looking westward along the Grand-Rue

The Place des Halles towards the port, from the clocktower

The Place des Halles from the port. Lutry was evidently a neolithic buzz of activity, with artefacts, graves, and standing stones all over the place. There are signs of Roman settlement as well, but in medieval times, the town was first mentioned in 908 as the property of the Welfs of Burgundy; the royal estate was inherited by the Salian emperors after 1039 and then gifted by the Emperor Henry IV to the Bishop of Lausanne in 1079, who hung onto it until the Reformation arrived in 1536.

The Quai Gustave Doret (named for the early 20th century musical composer from the region), and the market on the lakeside. A Benedictine priory was established here as well, before the 12th century, and early in that century, with freedoms granted by the bishop, the town began to grow up around the priory; it was walled about in the early 13th century, and then again later (to form the 'Bourg-Neuf') in order to incorporate new suburbs.

A colorful tourist train, the Lavaux Express, which makes hourly loops through various villages of this lakeside UNESCO World Heritage site, "Lavaux, Vineyard Terraces".

The train was built for the non-profit Lavaux Express Association by Moret Machines Agricoles of the nearby village of Savigny.

The port communal, constructed in 1836, adjacent to the CGN lake steamer dock

The port communal; along the coast 400m to the west is the new port, the "Port du Vieux Stand", completed in 1998.

In the background, the Château of the Bertholod Tower

A playground in the port at the Club Nautique de Lutry

The "flea market" along the Quai Gustave Doret

Kristin and George examining the wares

Texting

The Grand-Rue looking eastward

The Belle Epoque steamer leaving Lutry's embarcadère

It's La Suisse, built in 1910, chronologically the fourth of Lake Geneva's eight steamers.

The carpark on the east end of the quai

The Grand-Rue

The Place de la Couronne

When the city walls built in about 1220 were outgrown by neighborhoods developing outside them, new walls were built to incorporate them as well. This is the one remaining tower of two flanking the northeastern defenses of the bourg-neuf, or New Town.

The Rue de la Tour lakeward

The "temple", or (now) Protestant church. The monks from the abbey of Savigny-en-Lyonnais in France built a first Romanesque church here in 1025; the monastery, cloisters, and outbuildings grew to considerable size and became one of the most important priories in the canton.

A catastrophic fire in 1344 destroyed much of the town around the monastery and church, and the church was replaced, apparently in the same year, by this classic Gothic edifice.

Lutry resisted the Bernoise occupation and Reformation, unsuccessfully, and in 1536 the priory was suppressed and the church became Protestant. Significant improvements were carried out during the 16th century, and there have been restorations and renovations since then.

A number of side chapels built onto the northern side, and the clock tower dating from 1544

The Place du Temple in front of the church façade

The façade and adjacent church tower

Excellent, a single nave with a few side chapels. We need to fetch Kristin from the markets to see this.

Kristin and the Temple de Lutry

The façade on the western front, added in the Renaissance style in the early 1570s. On the windows just above there are small, cute sculptures of monkeys, and to this day the residents of Lutry, formally called the Lutryens, are colloquially referred to as Les Singes, and the monkey is the emblem of the village.

16th century art work, renovated in the 1980s

The organ above the front door

One of the side chapels on the northern wall

Kristin and George giddy with admiration

In the Rue du Château nearby, this is the back of the Lutry Castle and present town administration buildings.

In late medieval times, the Bishops of Lausanne entrusted the administration of the town to a bailiff or mayor of the town -- the position quickly became hereditary, and until 1598 the town government was led by the family with the surname "Mayor de Lutry".

"We vote today." The present château was built for the town administration, just within the city walls, in the mid-16th century. Following the death of Claude Mayor de Lutry in 1598, the castle was acquired by the noble Crousaz family, lords of Corsier (now Corsy, just up the hill) since the 11th century. It was bequeathed to the town by the last of that dynasty in 1854, and has served as the civic administration since 1940.

The front gate on the western side was added by the Bodmer brothers in the 16th century, the fellows who put the monkey façade on the church next door.

The Rue du Bourg at the front gate of the château

George and Kristin in the Rue du Bourg

In the Rue Verdaine, preparing to leave for our lunch date

On the Route du Lac or 'Lake Road' towards Vevey, where we're expected for lunch. In the course of their brocante sightseeing, Kristin and George found a painting they liked and inquired about the artist. The artist, as it turned out, was the well-known father of our friends with whom we're about to have lunch in Vevey.

After lunch, we're back in Lutry. Friend François and his daughter Natalie, with the painting in question, are awaiting the arrival of François' brother, on a bicycle in the rain, to help negotiate its purchase.