A house, not a gallery
Paintings in rooms with wooden floors and fireplaces.
Archipat — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Roderich Kahn — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Patrick Nouhailler's… — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Patrick Nouhailler's… — CC BY-SA 3.0
This matters more here than at any other Lausanne museum: the foundation shows no permanent collection and closes for weeks between exhibitions while the next is installed. Check its official site before planning. If you hit a closure the surrounding garden usually stays open and is worth passing through, and it combines well with the free Sauvabelin Tower nearby.
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The Fondation de l'Hermitage is an art museum in a **private nineteenth-century villa** on a hill north of Lausanne, surrounded by a large English garden of veteran trees with a direct view over the cathedral, the lake and the Savoy mountains — one of the loveliest settings in the city. The Bugnion family, bankers, built it in 1850 and three generations lived there before bequeathing it to the city in 1976 to become a museum. The rooms kept the spirit of a house — wooden floors, decorated ceilings, fireplaces — so you move among the paintings inside a home rather than a gallery. It has no large permanent collection on show; it runs on **major temporary exhibitions** (two or three a year) on Impressionism and after, often borrowing from world museums — so what is on the walls changes completely by season. Check the current exhibition before going; if it appeals, this is among Lausanne's most enjoyable visits, and the garden alone is worth the walk.
Paintings in rooms with wooden floors and fireplaces.
Veteran trees and a vista over cathedral and lake.
Route du Signal 2, 1018 Lausanne