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Chillon Castle (French: Château de Chillon) is an island castle located on Lake Geneva (Le Léman), south of Veytaux in the canton of Vaud. It is situated at the eastern end of the lake, on the narrow shore between Montreux and Villeneuve, which gives access to the Alpine valley of the Rhône. Chillon is amongst the most visited medieval castles in Switzerland and Europe.Successively occupied by the House of Savoy then by the Bernese from 1536 until 1798, it now belongs to the State of Vaud and is classified as a Swiss Cultural Property of National Significance. The Fort de Chillon, its modern counterpart, is hidden in the steep side of the mountain.

The castle of Chillon is built on the island of Chillon, an oval limestone rock advancing in Lake Geneva between Montreux and Villeneuve with a steep side on one side and on the other side the lake and its steep bottom. The placement of the castle is strategic: it guards the passage between the Vaud Riviera [fr], which allows access to the north towards Germany and France, and the Rhone valley, a quick route to Italy, and offers a viewpoint over the Savoyard coast on the opposite side of the lake. A garrison could thus control (both militarily and commercially) access to the road to Italy and apply a toll. Chillon has been a military site since the Roman period and the development of the current castle spans three periods: the Savoy Period, the Bernese Period, and the Vaudois Period.

Chillon began as a Roman outpost, guarding the strategic road through the Alpine passes. Objects dating back to Roman times were discovered during excavations in the 19th century, as well as remains from the Bronze Age. From a double wooden palisade, the Romans would have fortified the site before a square donjon was added in the 10th century. Sources from the 13th century link the possession of the Chillon site to the Bishop of Sion.

The oldest parts of the castle have not been dated definitively, but the first written record of the castle was in 1005. It was built to control the road from Burgundy to the Great Saint Bernard Pass. A charter of 1150, in which Count Humbert III granted the Cistercians of Hautcrêt free passage to Chillon, names the owner of the castle as Gaucher de Blonay, a vassal of the Count of Savoy within the feudal society of the time.

From the mid 12th century, the castle was summer home to the Counts of Savoy, who kept a fleet of ships on Lake Geneva. The castle was greatly expanded in 1248 and 1266-7 by Count Peter II. During this time the distinctive windows were added by Master James of Saint George, who is believed also to have added similar windows to Harlech Castle in Wales at a later date.

During the 16th century Wars of Religion, the dukes of Savoy used the castle to house prisoners. Its most famous prisoner was probably François de Bonivard, a Genevois monk, prior of St. Victor in Geneva and politician, who was imprisoned there in 1530 for defending his homeland from the dukes of Savoy. Over his six-year term, de Bonivard paced as far as his chain would allow, and the chain and rut are still visible.

In 1536 the castle was captured by a Genevois and Bernese force and all the prisoners, including de Bonivard, were released. The castle became the residence for the Bernese bailiff until Chillon was converted into a state prison in 1733. In 1798, the French-speaking canton of Vaud drove out the German-speaking Bernese authorities and declared the Lemanic Republic. The Vaudois invited in French troops to help them maintain autonomy from the other Swiss. When the French moved in and occupied, Chillon was used as a munitions and weapons depot.

Some restoration efforts on the Castle in the 19th Century, inspired by the Romantic vision of aesthetics, sacrificed historical veracity. At the end of the 19th century, a systematic restoration of the monument was undertaken, through which an ethic of monumental restoration was developed in one of the first cases of the application of archaeology and history to rebuild a structure in a historically accurate way. This was possible because of the combination of four factors:

The involvement of pioneering specialists in restoration including Johann Rudolf Rahn, one of the founders of the Swiss Society of Historical Monuments in 1880, and Henry de Geymüller , a specialist in Renaissance architecture who was closely associated with the restoration of buildings such as the Romanesque church of Church of Saint-Sulpice, Vaud in Saint-Sulpice, the Saint-François church [fr] in Lausanne, and the Lausanne Cathedral. The initial lead architect of the restoration at Chillon was Ernest Burnat , who had worked with de Geymüller in restoring Lausanne Cathedral. He initiated a general survey of the fortress, which was continued and intensified by his replacement as lead architect-archaeologist, Albert Naef , who played a major role in the development of archaeology in the Canton of Vaud. Naef devoted twenty years to the study of Chillon. Subordinating aesthetics to historical accuracy, he undertook detailed research into historical archives and conducted extensive archaeological excavations. The process was conscientiously documented in plans, sketches, photographs, and a journal kept by Naef. Until it was abandoned in 1908 the restoration followed a painstaking process of indicating replacement stones with inscriptions on the cut stone (R = Restored; RFS = Restoration facsimile; RL = Free Restoration), or by a change of colour or a red line on the masonry. Naef also restored the interior of the castle, including the tapestries of certain rooms such as the great room of the bailiff, also called the "great Bernese kitchen".

The creation in 1887 of The Association for the Restoration of Chillon. From the outset, the Association aimed for an "artistic" restoration with the intention of "giving back to objects the character with which they were clothed, almost a latent life, a life impression of the ideas of their time". It is also planned to create a historical museum at the castle.

The appointment in 1889 of a Technical Commission comprising renowned art historians and architects who specialised in monument restoration. Alongside Rahn and de Geymüller, it included Théodore Fivel, architect in Chambéry and connoisseur of Savoyard castle architecture, Léo Chatelain [fr], restorer of the Collegiate Church of Neuchâtel , and State architect Henri Assinare. The Commission first met on 27 October 1890 and closely supervised the restoration over subsequent years. De Geymüller played a key role in its success. Drawing on principles published in 1865, and enhanced in 1888, by the Royal Institute of British Architects, he established a framework in the Milestones for the Restoration Program printed in Lausanne in 1896.

Naef also joined the Technical Commission on the death of Fivel in 1895.The adoption by the Canton of Vaud in 1898 of a law on historic monuments, the first of its kind in Switzerland, which planned to establish a cantonal Commission for historic monuments and to create a cantonal archeologist's post. Naef, who drafted the law, was the first appointee to this function and was responsible for putting in place protection of historical monuments. The result was judged to be exemplary. In an 1898 lecture to the Zurich Antiquity Society, Johann Rudolf Rahn boasted about it, while the German Emperor, William II, inquired about the Chillon model when planning the reconstruction of the fortress of Haut-Koenigsbourg. Due to these restorations, the castle is in excellent condition and is a good model of feudal architecture.