Chateau de Chillon rests on a small island on the shores of Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). The lake itself is hemmed in on all sides by hills that rapidly rise into snow-tipped mountains. The castle's gothic night-time appearance is said to have inspired some of the passages in Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein's Monster'. Similarly, the story of François de Bonivard, a Genevan monk held captive in the castle's dungeons for four years by the Savoys, was the inspiration behind Byron's poem 'The Prisoner of Chillon'. Byron carved his initials into the pillar where he believed Bonivard to have been chained. Now, the castle is open to be explored, from the depths of its dungeons to the towers where you can look out on the lake and the mountainous peaks around.

www.chillon.ch/en/
Avenue de Chillon 21, CH 1820 Veytaux
+41 21 966 89 10
Google map: bit.ly/fZKVdL
en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Prisoner_of_Chillon#Sonnet_on_Chillon

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Travel around the coast of the lake and visit the Chateau de Chillon, on one side of which there is a precipitous underwater chasm where bodies were disposed of in the old days. This is a castle worth visiting if only to see the grimness of the appalling dungeons.

See those narrow slits in the rock where unfortunates were forced into and sealed up, only to be brought up in the evenings for the entertainment of the Duke and his guests. Tied to large vertical columns of wood which held up the roof while the guests tried to put out their eyes, many terrified prisoners twisted their heads away, - testimony of which are the scorch marks in the wood. But can we in the judgemental twentieth century point the finger at medieval cruelty? Remember Melei and Auschwitz and Bosnia and…..

Château de Chillon
Avenue de Chillon 21
CH-1820 Veytaux
Phone +41 21 966 89 10
www.chillon.ch/en/

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