YVOIRE - FRANCE

Yvoire is a small but very romantic small town (population ca. 800) on the southern, French shores of Lake Geneva. This traffic free village has managed to preserve much of its medieval look with town walls and gates, a historic castle, and narrow cobblestone streets. Yvoire is a beautiful town year round but particularly attractive during spring and summer when it is filled with flowers blooming from seemingly every balcony and windowsill. Yvoire is hugely popular with day-trippers and thus has a large number of restaurants, cafés, boutiques, art galleries, studios, and souvenir shops. With few formal sights, visiting Yvoire is relaxing and the town easy to enjoy. Yvoire is a short drive from Geneva and Evian or a fast passenger ferry crossing from Nyon in Switzerland.

Chateau d'Yvoire on Lake Geneva, France Yvoire’s written history goes back to 1306 and a time when Lake Geneva castles played an important role in protecting the strategic trade routes through the Alps and along the lake. However, changing trade routes pushed Yvoire into decline and relative obscurity since the sixteenth century. It is only the onslaught of mass tourism during the twentieth century that placed Yvoire back on the map as a popular day-trip destination for travelers in the Lake Geneva region.

Yvoire Castle Seen from the Fishing Boat PortChâteau d’Yvoire still dominates the small town today, as it must have done back in the Middle Ages. The castle is a typical Savoy design and reminds of many other medieval castles in the Lac Léman region. Yvoire Castle looks the part with turrets, towers, few windows, and thick walls. It has a commanding position right on the banks of Lake Geneva from where it guards the small fishing boat and large modern yacht harbors.

Even on moderately clear days, Yvoire Castle can be seen from towns such as Nyon, Prangins, and Gland on the Swiss side of Lake Geneva. Château d’Yvoire is in private hands and not open to visitors.

Yvoire is blessed by its well-preserved medieval look but it the extra effort to plant flowers everywhere that really lifts the town above the averages in spring and summer. Yvoire has been named one of the hundred most beautiful towns in France and has been a 4-flower Village Fleuri since the 1950s.