page_title: Lausanne
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Lausanne / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Saint-François square, ca. 1840, oil on canvas, anonymous. On display at the Musée historique de Lausanne.
context_page_description: Lausanne is the capital city and biggest town of the canton of Vaud in Romandy, Switzerland. A municipality, it is situated on the shores of Lake Léman. It faces the French town of Évian-les-Bains, with the Jura Mountains to its north-west. Lausanne is located 62 kilometres northeast of Geneva.
  The municipality Lausanne has a population of about 140,000, making it the fourth largest city in Switzerland, with the entire agglomeration area having about 420,000 inhabitants. The metropolitan area of Lausanne-Geneva was over 1.2 million inhabitants in 2000.
  Lausanne is a focus of international sport, hosting the International Olympic Committee, the Court of Arbitration for Sport and some 55 international sport associations. It lies in a noted wine-growing region. The city has a 28-station metro system, making it the smallest city in the world to have a rapid transit system. Lausanne hosted the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics.
context_section_description: The Romans built a military camp, which they called Lousanna, at the site of a Celtic settlement, near the lake where Vidy and Ouchy are situated; on the hill above was a fort called Lausodunon or Lousodunon (The "-y" suffix is common to many place names of Roman origin in the region (e.g.) Prilly, Pully, Lutry, etc.). By the 2nd century AD, it was known as vikanor[um] Lousonnensium and in 280 as lacu Lausonio. By 400, it was civitas Lausanna, and in 990 it was mentioned as Losanna.
  After the fall of the Roman Empire, insecurity forced the residents of Lausanne to move to its current centre, a hilly site that was easier to defend. The city which emerged from the camp was ruled by the Dukes of Savoy and the Bishop of Lausanne. Then it came under Bern from 1536 to 1798, and a number of its cultural treasures, including the hanging tapestries in the cathedral, were permanently removed. Lausanne has made repeated requests to recover them.
  After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Lausanne became (along with Geneva) a place of refuge for French Huguenots. In 1729, a seminary was opened by Antoine Court and Benjamin Duplan. By 1750, 90 pastors had been sent back to France to work clandestinely; this number would rise to 400. Official persecution ended in 1787; a faculty of Protestant theology was established at Montauban in 1808, and the Lausanne seminary was finally closed on 18 April 1812. During the Napoleonic Wars, the city's status changed. In 1803, it became the capital of a newly formed Swiss canton, Vaud, under which it joined the Swiss Federation.
caption: Saint-François square, c. 1840
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