Long considered a lazy and opulent city for wealthy exiles, the Vaud capital, also the Olympic capital, has become over the years a trendy, cultural and nature destination, as evidenced by the Frenchman Vincent Baudriller, director of the Vidy theater in Lausanne.
Of course, it’s neither Copenhagen nor Amsterdam, but behind its image of a bourgeois city, with its luxury boutiques and mansions, Lausanne also has a cycling culture, provided you have concrete calves, warns Vincent Baudriller: “For cycling, it’s a bit special, it’s a very steep city, it’s ideal for electric bikes which I admit, I also use to go down and up. But there are obviously more and more bicycles, even if it’s a little less practical than Dutch cities for example.”
Here, we tumble more than 500 meters in altitude between the heights of the city and the shores of Lake Geneva. The Frenchman continues: “It really is a sloping town, which gives it this beautiful energy. From everywhere, you can see far, towards the south, towards France, towards Europe, beyond the lake. It’s very inspiring, a bit like what we’re trying to do at the Vidy theatre. We have artists from here, but also from elsewhere, there is an open door, a crossroads where we look at the world from the theater.” In Lausanne, 40% of the population is foreign.
Since 2013, after spending several years at the Avignon Festival, Vincent Baudriller has been directing the Vidy theater in Lausanne. The place is also in the process of getting a makeover and will open next year in a whole new dimension.
“The theater was built in 1964, and a major modernization plan has been launched which will result in a building with four performance halls, a rehearsal hall, a construction workshop, details the Frenchman. It is a place where artists from Switzerland, France and elsewhere come to rehearse, create, present their show to the public of Lausanne.”
Two rooms, two atmospheres
Design, photography, fine arts, art brut… Between lake and mountain, in addition to exceptional cultural venues such as the Vidy theater and numerous museums, the city hosts the headquarters of several sports federations such as the International Cycling Union or the International Olympic Committee. Vincent Baudriller also makes the link between the actors and the athletes: “In sport, in each match, each competition, there is an energy and a dramatic dimension as in the theater, a dimension of the living. We have just accompanied the French artist Frédéric Ferrer who is doing a cycle on the sports of the Olympic Games, “Olympicorama”, and we did a show on rowing with a great Lausanne champion and Olympic medalist, Augustin Maillefer. We brought the public to the edge of the rowing basins, which are a few meters from the theater.
Lausanne, it’s a bit like two rooms, two atmospheres, with the Flon district in the center, once infamous and now fashionable with its bars, cafes and trendy restaurants. And on the shores of Lake Geneva, dream villas, hyper-luxury boutiques, grand hotels and XXL German sedans.
The city is irrigated in any case by an unparalleled bus-metro transport network. To encourage tourists to use it, each hotel, regardless of its category, gives all its customers a free transport card for the duration of their stay. Read and listen to the chronicle ici
Go further
Go to Lausanne with theSwiss Tourist Office
Theater Vidy-Lausanne