Yvoire is a medieval village on the French shore of Lake Geneva*, in Haute-Savoie — famous today for its château, flowers and beautifully photogenic streets.
This isn’t a ‘Guide to Yvoire’…
It’s not a ‘Things to Do in Yvoire’…
Not even a ‘Why You Should Visit Yvoire’…
Let’s look closer
So… you’re planning a trip to Yvoire? Perhaps you’re doing a tour of Lake Geneva?
Maybe, like me on my first visit, you’ll photograph the flowers.
You’ll take photos of the château, obviously. You’ll probably take a picture of a cobbled street with an ancient stone house, blue shutters and something outrageously pink or red tumbling from a window box.
And there’s nothing wrong with that — I’ve got hundreds of those too.
But here’s my suggestion, and it’s quite radical. Why don’t we put the camera down for a minute or two? (I’ve already broken out in a cold sweat!)
Why pocket the camera? Because some of the most interesting bits of Yvoire aren’t necessarily the ones everybody photographs.
Start with the doors
Old doors always make me curious, and Yvoire has plenty of them. Particularly ones you’re not supposed to open.
Doors set into thick stone walls, with tiny windows. Archways framing glimpses of another street worth investigating. Steps that appear to lead somewhere really interesting but, a bit frustratingly, almost always turn out to be private.
Some of those doors have been opening and closing for centuries.
In a village more than 700 years old, that’s a lot of footsteps. A lot of people coming home, leaving home, carrying baskets and pails of water, arguing, gossiping, falling in love and probably slamming the occasional door here and there too.
Every threshold must have a story. So, where shall we start?
At the beginning of course.
Yvoire wasn’t always this pretty
Yvoire hasn’t always been chocolate-box beautiful.
Its gates, fortifications, château, church and many of its buildings have genuine medieval origins, but the Yvoire of today is a mixture of medieval building and deliberate 20th century restoration, conservation and beautification.
Percy Bysshe Shelley saw Yvoire on 24 June 1816 while sailing around Lake Geneva with Byron. In History of a Six Weeks’ Tour, published the following year, he describes:
“Yvoire, a scattered village with an ancient castle” and says its houses were “interspersed with trees”. He writes of walnut, chestnut and oak trees and of the wooded promontory jutting into the lake.
It sounds idyllic.
Thirty years later, French writer Alfred de Bougy was much less impressed. In his 1846 book Le Tour du Léman, he gave the chapter on Yvoire the amazingly tactless title:
Chez les Sauvages du Léman — Among the Savages of Lake Geneva.
Perhaps he should have been a lot more diplomatic.
A rather different Yvoire
But De Bougy gives us a wonderfully opinionated first-hand glimpse of Yvoire before tourism transformed it.
The village is poor, rough and muddy, with cramped houses running down the slope towards the lake. He describes foul-smelling lanes, livestock, people living at very close quarters and in unmistakable poverty.
He also notices the château — minus the great roof and turrets that we can see today.
Then he tries to find somewhere to stay…
There are no hotels…
No auberges…
No guest houses…
Eventually he discovers a tiny drinking place which, according to him, is full of fleas and flies.
The landlady offers hm soup and eggs and asks whether he would like a dozen eggs cooked. A dozen. He wisely settles for the soup.
When that arrives, he claims it contains flies, so he asks for two boiled eggs instead. Both are rotten. By this point I think even I would have given up.
He finally eats a piece of Abondance cheese and some fresh walnuts.
Then he asks for a bed.
The landlady explains that they’ve never had a bed for travellers because they’re too poor, but he’s welcome to sleep in straw in the barn.
He declines and instead, pays a fisherman to take him across Lake Geneva to Nyon.
Is this possibly the earliest recorded bad TripAdvisor review of Yvoire?
De Bougy’s account should be taken for what it is: the observations of a pompous 19th century traveller who was obviously horrified by rural poverty.
But underneath the theatrics, it says something important. Yvoire was not always the beautifully restored, flower-filled village you see today.
Look down: medieval Yvoire
The stones under your feet have been polished by more history than you’d think from just looking at the Instagram photos.
Yvoire wasn’t built to be picturesque.
It was fortified in the early 14th century because of its extraordinarily useful position on Lake Geneva (or Lac Léman, which is its official French name).
The village sits on a promontory projecting into the lake, almost dividing the Petit Lac towards Geneva from the larger Grand Lac to the east.
From here, all movement across the water could be watched and controlled.
Lake Geneva was effectively a medieval motorway, carrying people, goods, soldiers and information between Geneva, the upper Rhône valley and routes towards Italy.
And Yvoire had a very good view of the traffic.
The castle, walls and gates weren’t decorative addition. This was a working medieval stronghold.
The flowers came much later.
Look up: the Château d’Yvoire
You can hardly miss the Château d’Yvoire.
It’s stood above the lake since the 14th century and has been privately owned by the same family since 1655.
This is one castle where you won’t be shuffling through bedrooms behind a tour guide holding an umbrella.
The château we see today, however, isn’t quite the château Shelley or de Bougy saw.
It suffered badly during the upheavals of the late 16th century, losing its enormous roof and defensive turrets. So, for centuries its outline was very different.
Roofless, yes. Abandoned, no.
Parts of the château remained usable, and when Alfred de Bougy visited in 1846 the Baron d’Yvoire was there and showed him around.
But that great roof wouldn’t return for 350 years.
So when did Yvoire become Yvoire
During the inter-war years Félix Bouvier d’Yvoire began a major restoration of the château.
The huge roof was reconstructed and the four corner turrets reinstated, restoring it to something much closer to its medieval appearance and creating the silhouette you can see today.
Work came to a halt with the outbreak of the Second World Was in 1939, and some of the final work was said to have been completed with help of local villagers and children.
But the château’s restoration was only part of the story. After the war, Yvoire itself began to change.
Improved transport brought more visitors. Tourism gradually replaced fishing and agriculture as the village’s economic focus.
Historic buildings were restored and public spaces were improved,
And then came the flowers.
About those famous Yvoire flowers
Okay, let’s not ignore them completely. Yvoire without flowers would be like Paris without cafés or Switzerland without chocolate.
And they are magnificent.
But the flowers aren’t an ancient tradition.
After the Second World War, villagers gradually began decorating their houses with increasingly elaborate displays, and in 1959 Yvoire received its first national recognition for its flowers.
Today, Yvoire holds the highest ‘4 Fleurs’ rating in France’s national floral awards.
What now looks inseparable from ‘medieval Yvoire’ is actually part of its modern reinvention.
Look beyond the geraniums and begonias and you’ll begin to see the bones of the village underneath.
Heavy stone lintels.
Old roof lines.
Narrow passages.
Walls that have been altered, patched, extended and repurposed over centuries.
The flowers are beautiful of course, but they’re not the most interesting thing about Yvoire.
That’s a story for another day.
And that glittering Yvoire church spire?
One of the first things you notice as you enter Yvoire is the gleaming Savoyard church spire.
Its polished silver onion shape catches the summer sun and seems to light up the old stone that surrounds it.
But, once again, all is not quite what it seems.
The church itself has medieval origins, but the present bulb-shaped tower dates from the 19th century.
It was originally clad in tinned iron.
By the late 20th century that covering had deteriorated and was replaced with stainless steel — which is what you see blazing in the sunshine today.
The ball and cockerel on top are gilded with gold leaf from the last gold leaf producer in France, based in Excenevex.
So even one of Yvoire’s most instantly recognisable ‘old’ features has its own surprisingly modern chapter.
That’s what I mean about looking closer.
Take the street nobody else takes
“Hang on… I wonder what’s down here” Words that haunt my husband’s worst nightmares. You’d think he’d be used to it by now.
But isn’t that how you find the most interesting places?
This is exactly how to explore Yvoire. When everyone else turns right, go the other way. If a lane appears to lead nowhere, investigate it.
If you glimpse the lake between two houses, go and see whether there’s a better view around the corner. There usually is.
Or it might just be a dead end, but that’s half the fun.
And then there’s the lake
However determined you are to investigate doors, stones and mysterious passageways, Lake Geneva (Lac Léman) keeps appearing.
At the end of a streets. Through an archway. Between two buildings. Then suddenly there it is — enormous, blue and sparkling, with the Jura beyond.
And of course, that’s the real reason Yvoire exists here at all. The lake wasn’t simply the backdrop.
Not only was it the road, it was trade. It was defence, and it was food. In fact, along with communication, it was everything.
The flowers may be what catches your eye first but the lake is what made the village.
The Jardin des Cinq Sens
There is one place where the modern transformation of Yvoire can be seen first-hand.
In 1986 Yves and Anne-Monique d’Yvoire began turning the château’s abandoned vegetable garden into the Jardin des Cinq Sens.
Inspired by medieval gardens, it’s arranged as a series of small spaces designed around sight, smell, touch and taste, with more than 1,500 varieties of plants. For sound, the birds do most of the work.
It’s peaceful, playful and more interesting than many formal gardens. Don’t miss the magical plants section. Definitely my favourite bit.
Don’t ‘do’ Yvoire
Maybe this is the mistake.
Yvoire appears on so many lists of things to do around Lake Geneva that it’s tempting to arrive with a mental clipboard.
Castle tick
Flowers tick
Harbour tick
Ice Cream tick
Back to the car.
But why follow the herd…
Wander
Have lunch down by the harbour. Sit beside the lake if you find a bench. Investigate a doorway.
Buy something completely unnecessary, Wonder what’s behind a wall. Take the street that looks as if it leads nowhere,
Because for all its extraordinary prettiness, Yvoire isn’t just a postcard.
Its a centuries-old village where people still live, work, open their shutters in the morning and presumably occasionally wonder why someone’s photographing their front door.
Yvoire doesn’t need a checklist. It just needs curiosity.
And the occasional irresistible urge to wonder what on earth is behind that door.
- A note on the name: Just a quick explanation about the use of the name Lake Geneva to describe what’s essentially Lac Léman in French. Lake Geneva is the name that’s most familiar to most English-speaking readers and makes the location immediately clear.
