Hotel Angleterre - Lausanne

Hotel Angleterre is located on Place du Port, along Lake Geneva, in Lausanne, Switzerland.  Although long an established locale for visitors to the lake, its connection to a pair of literary refugees has brought the hotel its most lasting fame.  In the summer of 1816 George Gordon, Lord Byron fled England amidst the backdrop of a scandalous breakup with his wife.  The bad boy of romantic poetry found his way to Switzerland, and eventually Geneva, in May 1816.  Travelling with him was an entourage which include his personal physician, the 20 year old John Polidori.  Also travelling in Switzerland that summer was Percy Bysshe Shelley, his mistress Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, and her step-sister Clare Clairmont.  Shelley was also escaping England, having left behind his abandoned wife.  He and Mary were travelling with their four-month-old son William.  The machinations of Clare found their party running into Byron and his party on the shores of Lake Geneva that summer.  The two poets became fast friends and decided to rent homes near each other in Cologny, just north of Geneva, with Byron taking Villa Diodati and the Shelleys taking Maison Chapuis.  Literary legend notes that during a period of stormy weather, while all the members of both parties were holed up at Villa Diodati, a suggestion by Byron to write a scary story wound up with Mary creating Frankenstein and John Polidori writing The Vampyre.  Shortly after those eventful days in June Byron and Shelley set out together on a journey to Montreux.  While there the pair visited Chillon Castle and ventured into the dungeon to see where the prisoner, Francois de Bonivard, had been kept.  Byron even carved his initials into one of the pillars.  The two men journeyed back and spent time here, at the inn which would eventually become the Hotel Angleterre.  While a guest of the inn Byron penned The Prisoner of Chillon and a commemorative plaque at the hotel's entrance makes note of this.  After the pair's return to Geneva the parties would eventually split up, with Byron heading for Italy and the Shelleys back to England.    

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