Lausanne - History

History

The Romans built a military camp, which they called Lousanna, at the site of a Celtic settlement, near the lake where currently 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 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 transfer of Lausanne to its current centre, a hilly, easier to defend site. 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 a number of 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 ninety pastors had been sent back to France to work clandestinely; this number would rise to four hundred. 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.