Chateau de Chillon

Visiting

Ninety minutes covers it at a walking pace and two hours does it properly. The route is self guided with a leaflet rather than a timed tour, so the pace belongs to the visitor, and it runs from the vaults at water level up through the courtyards and into the halls above. The hour that catches a visit out is the closing one rather than the opening one: the gate stops admitting an hour before the castle shuts, which from November to February means four in the afternoon. Arriving inside that last hour turns a two hour building into a fast lap, and the walk in from Montreux along the shore is the first thing dropped to make up the difference.