The old town is small, flat and made for walking. The House of Savoy laid it out under Pierre de Savoie in the 1260s on a simple grid of three straight streets, the rue du Lac, the rue du Milieu and the rue du Four, and those streets, with their arcades, fountains and cobbles, still shape the centre today.
Place Pestalozzi
Everything gathers on Place Pestalozzi, the long square at the heart of it. The Château d’Yverdon fills one side, the neoclassical church another, the Maison d’Ailleurs science-fiction museum sits on the square, and the 18th-century town hall closes a third. Plane trees, café terraces and a fountain do the rest, and a statue of Pestalozzi, the educator who ran his school in the castle, stands in the middle.
Free contemporary art
A quiet surprise hides in the town hall: the Centre d’Art Contemporain Yverdon (CACY), which was the Lake Geneva region’s first contemporary-art centre when it opened in 2013. It puts on four exhibitions a year across 300 m² in the old building, and it is free, with guided tours, late openings and activities for children. See centre-art-yverdon.ch for what is showing.
What to see on foot
- The arcaded houses and fountains along the three Savoyard streets.
- The market on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, when the square fills with stalls.
- A short walk down toward the lake and harbour, a few minutes north.
Practical notes
- Free and open at any hour; the streets are public, and the CACY is free too.
- Largely pedestrianised, flat and step-free, with some cobbles.
- Time needed: an hour to wander, longer with a coffee, the market and the art centre.
Combine it
The square puts the Château d’Yverdon, Maison d’Ailleurs and the CACY within a minute of one another, the natural lead-in to an afternoon at the Centre Thermal.
