The
Chillon Castle (Chateau de Chillon)
is located on the shore of Lake Geneva near
Montreux, Switzerland. The castle consists
of 25 independent buildings that were gradually
connected and now form a single whole.
It
now hosts a museum with some historical
objects preserved.
It was made famous by Lord
Byron, who wrote the poem The Prisoner Of Chillon
(1816) about François de Bonivard, a Genevois
monk and politician who was imprisoned there from
1530 to 1536.
The oldest parts of the castle
have not been definitively dated, but the first written
record of the castle is in 1160. From the mid 12th
century, the castle was home to the Counts of Savoy,
and it was greatly expanded in the 13th century by
Pietro II.
A few jaded cynics might call
it a tourist trap, but let's be fair. The Chateau
de Chillon is a genuine 13th Century castle just outside
Montreux, Switzerland, not a plaster replica at Disney
World. And Lord Byron's famous poem, The Prisoner
of Chillon, was about a real person: François
Bonivard, a lay official at St. Victor's priory in
Geneva, who spoke out in favor of the Reformation
and was shackled to a stone pillar by the Duke of
Savoy from 1530 until the Bernese conquest of Vaud
in 1536.
The castle appears to rise
out of the waters of Lac Léman, where it occupies
a rocky islet and is connected to the mainland by
a small wooden bridge. The setting could hardly be
more dramatic--and it's certainly beautiful, at least
to modern visitors who know they won't be assigned
to basement quarters for an indefinite stay. (In the
old days, its scenic location had a more practical
value: The castle faced the road between Bergundy
and Italy, thereby protecting the House of Savoy's
military and commercial interests.)
A
thousand years and counting No one is sure when
the castle was first built. Its site has been occupied
since the Bronze Age, but most historians date the
oldest parts of the chateau to about a thousand
years ago and credit Pierre II of Savoy with building
the present structure in the 13th Century. Its infamous
dungeons were literally carved from the rock that
supports the castle foundations. The visible portions
of the castle include some two dozen buildings around
three courtyards, all jammed together in a classically
crowded medieval style.
For
the last 200 years, the château has been owned
by the Canton of Vaud, and it has been a tourist
attraction since it was visited (and popularized)
by 19th Century poets and authors such as Byron,
Shelley, Victor Hugo, Hans Christian Andersen, Flaubert,
Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens.
