The Olympic Museum in Lausanne: a full walk-through

Lausanne has carried the official title of "Olympic Capital" since 1994: the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee, founded by Pierre de Coubertin, has been in the city since 1915. The Olympic Museum is the institution's public face, and one of the most visited cultural sites in French-speaking Switzerland. By the IOC's own figures, around 320 000 people came through in 2024.

Getting there

Address: Quai d'Ouchy 1, Ouchy quarter, directly on the shore of Lake Geneva. From Lausanne main station, ten minutes on the M2 metro (direction Ouchy-Olympique), exit "Ouchy". From the lakeshore, five minutes uphill through the park to the entrance. Parking is limited; in tourist season you are better off without a car.

Structure: three levels going down

The museum is built into the hillside, and the exhibition descends from antiquity to the present. Visitors begin at the top and walk down through ancient Olympia, the Coubertin revival, and twentieth- and twenty-first-century Games.

Level 1 — The Olympic World

The history of the Games from antiquity to 1896. Archaeological artefacts — replicas of Greek originals from the museums of Athens and Olympia. Coubertin's documents, his manuscripts and letters, the original IOC charter of 1894. The signature exhibit is a wall of torches from every Summer and Winter Games since Berlin 1936 (the torch relay only began that year). The torches differ in form, alloy, fuel system — a parallel survey of twentieth-century industrial design.

Level 2 — The Olympic Games

The main exhibition: 150 screens, thousands of pieces of equipment — Bob Beamon's shoes from his 8.90 m jump at Mexico 1968, Sonja Henie's skates, Eddy Merckx's bicycle. A large round hall with models of every Olympic stadium. The medal wall holds an example from every Games behind glass.

The interactive sections are honest: you can race your own reaction time against an Olympic sprinter, step into a fencing piste to feel the distance, watch a high-jump bar projected at your own height. Children get pinned here for over an hour.

Level 3 — The Olympic Spirit

The contemporary level — values, controversies, contested episodes. There is a section on the black gloves of Tommie Smith and John Carlos at Mexico, on the 1980 and 1984 boycotts, on doping scandals. The IOC is not painting itself white — for an institutional museum, that is rare.

The same level hosts rotating temporary exhibitions, typically two a year. At time of verification: "Paris 2024: the first gender-equal Games", open through September 2026.

The sculpture garden and terrace

Outside, the museum is wrapped in a sculpture park on sporting themes — open free, even without a museum ticket. Niki de Saint Phalle's "Footballers", works by Igor Mitoraj, Jean Tinguely, Boris Saltzman. From the upper terrace of the TOM Café, the panorama spans Lake Geneva and the Chablais Alps on the French shore; on a clear day, Évian is visible.

The Olympic Museum is a rare example of an institutional exhibition where pathos does not crowd out history: doping, political boycotts, the Munich attack — all are addressed directly and at length.

Hours, prices, opening

• Hours: 9:00–18:00 daily, May to October. 10:00–18:00 November to April. Closed Monday in the winter season.
• Tickets: 20 CHF adult, 14 CHF student, under-16 free. Family 2+2: 48 CHF.
• Swiss Museum Pass and Swiss Travel Pass: free admission.
• Audio guide (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese): free via the Olympic Museum app — bring your own headphones.
• Allow 2.5 to 3 hours without rushing.

Nearby

Five minutes' walk away is the Ouchy lakeside promenade, with CGN ferries to Évian (France, 35 minutes; passport not required within Schengen). Above the lake — Lausanne Cathedral and the Musée de l'Élysée, the national photography museum, since 2022 relocated to the Plateforme 10 complex by the railway station. If you plan both museums, take the Swiss Museum Pass — it pays for itself on the second venue.