Lausanne

The Olympic capital, built on hills above Lake Geneva about halfway between the Jura and the Alps, facing Évian-les-Bains across the water. It began as a Celtic and Roman settlement on the shore and became a town at the foot of Notre-Dame, the cathedral raised in the twelfth century. In the twentieth century it turned into a centre of international sport and took the International Olympic Committee. The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland sits here, though the city is not the country’s de jure capital.