Castle Chillon

Excavations carried out from the end of the 19th century, in particular by the archeologist Albert Naef (1862-1936), affirm that this site has been occupied since the Bronze Age.



Side View





Entry Drive





In its current state, the Castle of Chillon is the result of several centuries of constant building, adaptations, renovations and restorations.

The rocky island on which the castle is built, was both a natural protection and a strategic location to control the passage between northern and southern Europe.

The history of the castle was influenced by three major periods:

• The Savoy period (12th century to 1536)
  The oldest written document mentioning the castle dates from 1150; it says that the House of Savoy already controlled the route along the shores of Lake Geneva.

• The Bernese period (1536-1798)
  The Swiss, more precisely the Bernese, conquered the Pays de Vaud and occupied Chillon in 1536. The castle retained it's role as a fortress, arsenal and prison for over 260 ans.

• The Vaudois period (1798 to the present)
  The Bernese left Chillon in 1798 at the time of the Vaudois Revolution. The castle became the property of the Canton of Vaud when it was founded in 1803. The restoration of the historical monument began at the end of the 19th Century and continues to this day.

http://www.chillon.ch/en/index-La%2Bgrande%2Bhistoire-0-0.html

Map



Chapel



Stained Glass Window



Old Town Geneva

Tuesday we toured Old Town Geneva.  We had a walking tour with a Dorothy, our guide.  She was full of energy while telling us of the history of the several old buildings.  One building we toured was the Cathédrale St-Pierre.  The church was begun in 1160; the original building took 72 years to finish and has had a multitude of bits and pieces added on over the centuries. A small side-chapel, the Chapelle des Macchabées, was added in 1397; more like a museum than a church – was tacked onto the main west front of the building in 1752, facing onto Cour St-Pierre; the two square towers above the east end are totally different, and between them rises a curious greenish steeple added in the late nineteenth century. When you walk in the church, you are met with the clean lines of gloomy, severely hard stonework. In 1535 the people of Geneva accepted the Reformation and embarked on a rampage. All the altars in the cathedral along with all the statues and icons were destroyed, the organs were smashed and the painted decoration on the interior walls was whitewashed. Only the massive pulpit and the stained glass of the chancel survived.



As we walked through the interior architecture, your eye is drawn up to the only decoration to survive the length of the clustered pillars, grotesque monsters and a bare-breasted double-tailed mermaid. Copies of the only fifteenth-century frescoes that survived the Reformation – angels playing musical instruments – are on the ornamented vaults of the chancel (the area around the alter).  The cathedral is built on the remains of occupation going back to the Romans: the first church, just north of the present cathedral, has been dated to around 350 AD. From then on, the hill on which the cathedral stands was the site of almost constant building and rebuilding.

Archeologists have been working to expose walls, rooms and mosaic floors beneath the cathedral since 1976, and the huge site is open to the public pretty rarefied stuff but exceptionally labeled, subterranean long narrow walkway winding around and over the crumbling remains. With more than 200 levels of building work so far discovered in eleven zones, it’s hard to figure out exactly what’s going on, but the free audios help.

Hello from Switzerland!
Today we rose early and had our croissant, orange juice and cheese.  Then made our way to the Chocolaterie Stettler to watch some bunnies and eggs being made. 

We then made our way to the CERN to learn about physics and stuff.  I'll let the other guys tell you about this tour. 



Historical Architecture in Switzerland

Le château de Grandson

Grandson

Bâtiment des Forces Motrices

Genève

Historical Architecture in Switzerland

All epochs of historical architecture in Europe are represented in Switzerland. Some examples:

• Ruins from the Age of Romans at Aventicum, Augusta Raurica (Kaiseraugst/Augst), Martigny, Vindonissa (Windisch), and many other places in Switzerland.
  
  
• www.swisscastles.ch presents more than 500 Swiss castles.
  
  
• Late medieval covered wooden bridges can be found all around Switzerland, the most famous in Lucerne: Chapel Bridge & Water Tower and Spreuer Bridge.
  
  
  
• Numerous old wooden farmhouses can be found all over the country. At least 20 different regional styles can be distinguished. Almost 100 original century-old buildings from all over Switzerland have been moved and reconstructed in original size at Ballenberg, an open air museum in the Bernese Oberland region.
  
  
• Lucerne's Jesuit Church, built between 1667 and 1677 is the first large baroque church in Switzerland and was followed by many others.
  
  
• Art nouveau churches by Swiss architect Karl Moser can be found in Basel (blends Neo-Romanic and Art Nouveau styles) and in Lucerne (1912) (blends Neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau styles)
  
  
• Swiss architect Karl Moser also designed St. Antony's Church in Basel, Switzerland's first roughcast concrete church in 1926/27
  
  http://travelguide.all-about-switzerland.info/outstanding-swiss-architecture.html#HistoricalSwissArchitecture

First Post in Class

Today we created our blog sites. Here, I will post information on my trip to Switzerland. Hope it will be interesting for you.