History of the villages of the Jura-Nord vaudois district (Vaud)
The 105 documented localities of the Jura-Nord vaudois district, in the canton of Vaud. Each page covers the origin of the name, the main stages of its history and its remains, with sources.
Agiez
In 1888 the Agiez quarry, above the Orbe gorges, employed about a hundred workers. Its white stone was used notably for buildings on the Place Saint-François in Lausanne.
VDArnex-sur-Orbe
Given to the Romainmôtier priory in 1049, this wine-growing village at the foot of the Jura saw some fifty Bernese bailiffs come and go between 1536 and 1798.
VDArrissoules
Former agricultural estate of the abbey of Hauterive, born of medieval clearance, now a hamlet of the municipality of Rovray on the heights above lac de Neuchâtel.
VDBallaigues
Above the village, a road with ruts cut into the rock carried salt from Salins-les-Bains until the mid-19th century. Louis Soutter lived here from 1923 to 1942.
VDBaulmes
At the foot of the cliff, rock shelters inhabited for more than 12'000 years. In the 7th century Duke Chramnélène founded a monastery at Baulmes, later a Cluniac priory.
VDBavois
Château-Dessus and Château-Dessous, perhaps born of the divisions of the lords of Joux's lordship, both appear on the coat of arms of this village on the Orbe plain.
VDBelmont-sur-Yverdon
A fortified town at the foot of the castle of the lords of Grandson, Belmont counted in 1433 among the «bonnes villes» of the Pays de Vaud, before becoming a village again in the 16th century.
VDBioley-Magnoux
On 4 and 5 June 1476, marching on Morat, Charles the Bold stayed at Bioley castle, which the Confederates had occupied the year before.
VDBofflens
In 1011 King Rudolph III of Burgundy ceded six houses in Bofflens to the monks of Romainmôtier, who from then on owned the whole of this small village at the foot of the Jura.
VDBonvillars
In a vineyard south of La Cour stands a Neolithic monolith about 3 metres high, presented as the tallest menhir in Switzerland.
VDBretonnières
Bretonnières keeps one of the first stone churches in the Pays de Vaud, whose oldest parts date from the 11th-12th centuries.
VDBullet
Destroyed by fire in 1744, this village at the foot of the Chasseron became a holiday resort around the turn of the 20th century, with the Les Rasses plateau and its Grand Hôtel.
VDChamblon
Chamblon stands on a red limestone hill once surrounded by the lake, where an exiled Courland baron had a castle built in 1762.
VDChampagne
Mentioned as early as 885, Champagne lost the right to put its own name on its wines as a result of the bilateral agreements between Switzerland and the European Union.
VDChampvent
Around 1295-1300 Pierre de Champvent, seneschal to King Edward I of England, built the four-towered castle that overlooks the Orbe plain.
VDChavannes-le-Chêne
On the edge of the Vallon des Vaux, inhabited from the Neolithic to the early Middle Ages, Chavannes-le-Chêne became the centre of the lordship of Saint-Martin-du-Chêne in the 16th century.
VDChavornay
In 927 King Rudolph II confirmed at Chavornay the election of Libo as bishop of Lausanne. The village on the Orbe plain then belonged to the kings of Burgundy.
VDChêne-Pâquier
The church of Pâquier, built in 1667 on an entirely elliptical plan, is one of the first new churches built in Switzerland since the Reformation.
VDCheseaux-Noréaz
The Château de Champ-Pittet, built in 1789-1791 for François-Louis-Frédéric Haldimand, has housed the French-speaking Swiss headquarters of Pro Natura since 1991, next to 40 hectares of protected marshland.
VDConcise
At Sous-Colachoz, on Lake Neuchâtel, 25 prehistoric villages followed one another. Concise is also where the Confederates defeated Charles the Bold on 2 March 1476.
VDCorcelles-près-Concise
North of the village four menhirs form a rectangle. They were once taken for a trophy of the battle of Grandson, but three of them date from the Neolithic.
VDCorcelles-sur-Chavornay
In 888 a vassal named Vodelgise gives the bishop of Lausanne lands at Corcelles that he had received three years earlier from Emperor Charles the Fat.
VDCronay
Rodolphe Töpffer spent his summers in a house in Cronay. He inherits it in 1843 and illustrates his «Voyage à la Grande-Chartreuse» there the same year.
VDCroy
In the 19th century the Grand Chaney quarry supplied over 200 fountain basins to the communes of the canton. Croy grew up at a crossroads above the Nozon.
VDCuarny
Flammable gases escaped from the ground at Cuarny: the village put them on its coat of arms, and drillers went down 2'500 metres looking for oil, without success.
VDDémoret
Démoret's Saint-Maurice church succeeds a first sanctuary of the 6th century. The village, between the Broye and the Mentue, also has two castles.
VDDonneloye
At Donneloye a tunnel more than 500 metres long linked the caves of the Moulin du Pont to the parsonage. It was still in use in 1925.
VDEnvy
In the Bellaires forest, on Envy's territory, iron was produced from the 4th century BC to the 6th century AD.
VDÉpendes
From 1764 the people of Épendes began turning the Orbe marshes into meadows and pastures, below the hill of La Poëpe and its early medieval refuge.
VDEssert-Pittet
«Fouette-Grenouilles» (frog-whippers): the inhabitants' nickname reportedly recalls the habit of beating the water of the ponds at night to silence the frogs.
VDEssert-sous-Champvent
Its name, «Exertas» in 1095, means cleared land, and its inhabitants bear the dialect nickname «Lè Pequa-Vè», the worm-pickers.
VDFiez
A small Roman stone lion found in a villa at Fiez adorns the village fountain as a copy. The original is kept in the municipal hall.
VDFontaines-sur-Grandson
In the middle of the village stands a bell tower without a church, built in 1796, which now houses the municipal council.
VDFontanezier
Until 1961 three fountains from the 1850s supplied all of Fontanezier's drinking water. They have appeared on its coat of arms since 1927.
VDGiez
In 1476 Charles the Bold set up camp at Giez to prepare the assault on Grandson. Many fragments of weapons have been found there.
VDGossens
Until the 17th century Gossens consisted of a single house sheltering some fifteen families, plus two farmhouses. A great fire then destroyed almost the whole village and its archives.
VDGrandevent
Grandevent has nothing to do with «grands vents» (strong winds): the name is said to come from «devens», a wood where cutting timber, or land where grazing livestock, was forbidden.
VD · TownGrandson
On 28 February 1476 Charles the Bold takes the castle and the whole Bernese garrison perishes. On 2 March the Confederates put his army to flight.
VDGressy
On the hill of Sermuz, above Gressy, a Gallic wall was built in the 1st century BC. Later, the Bernese bailiff of Yverdon spent his summers in the village.
VDJuriens
In 1400 men from the barony of La Sarraz plundered Juriens and drove off 2'000 head of cattle. The monks of Romainmôtier won heavy damages.
VDL'Abbaye
The Aymon tower, a 14th-century bell tower, is all that can still be seen of the Premonstratensian abbey around which L'Abbaye grew up, on the Lac de Joux.
VDL'Abergement
Since 1941 the church of L'Abergement has held stained glass by Eugène Grasset, a burgher of the village and creator of Larousse's «La Semeuse». The windows were first intended for Lausanne Cathedral.
VDL'Auberson
The people of L'Auberson, nicknamed the « Culs-Gelés », mined iron, made lace and watches, and then music boxes until the 1970s.
VDL'Orient
Its name, «Orient de l'Orbe», recalls its place on the eastern bank of the river. In 1884 the Nouvelle Lémania watch manufacture was founded here.
VDLa Mothe
On the rounded hill that almost closed off the valley stood the castle of the lords of Champvent, centre of a lordship until it was destroyed in 1476, during the Burgundian Wars.
VDLa Praz
In the forest south-west of the village, large blocks set in a rough arc form a cromlech, one of the few visible in Switzerland, whose purpose is unknown.
VDLa Russille
A single-storey dairy with a hipped roof, built before 1817, recalls that this ISOS-listed hamlet at the foot of the Suchet lived mainly from milk.
VDLa Vraconnaz
Its peat bog has grown by about a millimetre a year for more than ten thousand years. In 1911 it became a nature reserve, presented as the first in Switzerland.
VDLe Brassus
Before the watches came iron: an ironworks from 1555, a blast furnace until 1743, then fine-stone cutting and watchmaking on the banks of the Orbe.
VDLe Chenit
In 1943-1944 four smugglers led young Jews through the Risoud forest into Switzerland. All four were later recognised as «Righteous Among the Nations».
VDLe Lieu
The oldest village in the Vallée de Joux, Le Lieu grew out of a monastic community attested in 1155. For a long time its commune covered the whole valley.
VDLe Pont
From 1879 to 1942 Le Pont cut the ice of Lac Brenet and shipped it to the breweries and restaurants of Paris, Lyon and Dijon.
VDLe Séchey
In the last third of the 18th century Le Séchey enjoyed a remarkable watchmaking boom, before the crisis of the Napoleonic era hit it hard.
VDLe Sentier
It was at Le Sentier that the Le Coultre & Cie manufacture was founded in 1833, becoming Jaeger-LeCoultre in 1937. Watchmaking has developed here since the 18th century.
VDLe Solliat
According to tradition, Le Solliat owes its name to a pond where a bear came to drink around 1554. The watchmaker Philippe Dufour set up his workshop in the old school.
VDLes Bioux
In Les Bioux the hamlet of Vers-chez-Grosjean became in the 19th century the first base of the Darbyite movement in Switzerland. The village also saw the birth of the Valjoux watch factory.
VDLes Charbonnières
On the night of 10 to 11 September 1900, an oil lamp fell into sawdust and started a fire that destroyed 15 houses in Les Charbonnières.
VD · TownLes Clées
In 1134 Pope Innocent II forbade, in vain, the rebuilding of the castle of Les Clées because of its bad reputation. The castle controlled the road over the Jougne pass by means of a toll.
VDLes Rasses
Opened in 1898 with a view stretching from Mont Blanc to the Jungfrau, the Grand Hôtel des Rasses was named « Historic Hotel of the Year 2019 ».
VDLignerolle
The last anti-tank barrier built in Switzerland went up at Lignerolle in the mid-1980s, next to small forts disguised as chalets.
VDMathod
On the former Roman road from Orbe to Avenches, Mathod keeps a Bernese castle enlarged in the 18th century with a large covered Palladian-style staircase. The village is set to merge with Suscévaz in 2027.
VDMauborget
The highest village of the Vaud Jura, at 1'170 m, which celebrated the 600th anniversary of its first mention in 2003 by planting a lime tree.
VDMézery-près-Donneloye
A lordship separate from Donneloye for centuries, this farming hamlet only inaugurated its street lighting in 2007, a year before merging with Donneloye.
VDMolondin
Farming village on a plateau overlooking the ravine of the Ruisseau des Vaux, heir to the lordship of Saint-Martin-du-Chêne, whose medieval tower still stands.
VDMontagny-le-Corbe
Castle site and former centre of the lordship of Montagny-le-Corbe, on the hill above the Brinaz, in the municipality of Montagny-près-Yverdon.
VDMontagny-près-Yverdon
The ruins of the castle of Montagny-le-Corbe, destroyed in 1475 during the Burgundian Wars, still overlook the Orbe plain. The inhabitants are nicknamed «lè fouetta-corbé».
VDMontcherand
Its church holds Romanesque wall paintings from the late 11th or early 12th century, among the oldest in Switzerland, rediscovered in 1902 under the Reformation whitewash.
VDMutrux
The farmers of Mutrux work most of the Mont Aubert, although the mountain belongs to Concise and Corcelles-près-Concise.
VDNovalles
Small farming village on the plateau overlooking the left bank of the Arnon, attested in 1179, whose coat of arms recalls the old mill.
VDOnnens
Around 4700-4500 BC a child aged about three was buried at Praz Berthoud, in Onnens: it is considered the oldest known burial in the canton of Vaud.
VD · TownOrbe
A residence of the Burgundian rulers in 888, later a common bailiwick of Bern and Fribourg, Orbe is the birthplace of the reformer Pierre Viret and keeps at Boscéaz the mosaics of a large Roman villa.
VDOrges
Village that became an independent municipality in 1849, after tensions between the millers on the Arnon and the landowning farmers of Vugelles-La-Mothe.
VDOrzens
The reformer Antoine Marcourt was pastor of Orzens from 1540 to 1543. The village keeps a small castle remodelled in the early 18th century.
VDPeney
The centre in 1228 of a vast parish of which Vuitebœuf was only a dependency, Peney lost its church of Saint-Pierre in 1907. Only the bell tower survives.
VDPomy
On a molasse plateau south-east of Yverdon-les-Bains, Pomy carries the apple tree in its name and in its coat of arms, whose six apples stand for the old burgher families.
VDPrahins
A small Vaud street-village born of seven scattered fiefs, today a historic hamlet of the municipality of Donneloye.
VDPremier
Staging-post village at the foot of the Jura between Romainmôtier and Vaulion, former land of the convent of Romainmôtier, rebuilt after the fires of the late 19th century.
VDProvence
At the foot of Mont Aubert, Provence's territory stretches to the Creux-du-Van. Roger Schutz, the future Brother Roger and founder of Taizé, was born here in 1915 and spent his childhood here.
VDRances
Village on a plateau overlooking the Mujon valley, at the foot of the Suchet, rich in prehistoric archaeological sites and once the seat of a Bernese court of justice.
VDRomainmôtier
Born around a monastery that tradition traces to Saint Romanus around 450, the village saw nearly eleven centuries of monastic life end with the death of the last prior in 1537.
VDRomairon
The Vaugondry-Romairon school, built in the early 20th century, stands exactly on the border between the two former municipalities.
VDRovray
Birthplace of the writer Alice Rivaz, born in 1901, on a plateau above Yvonand, with which the hamlet of Arrissoules has been united since 2005.
VDSaint-Christophe
After the Reformation the parish church of Saint-Christophe became an oven and then a grain store, and a seigneurial manor rose on the site of the parsonage.
VDSaint-Maurice (Champagne)
Around a church recorded in 1228, the hamlet became at the Reformation the seat of one of the four Reformed parishes of the bailiwick of Grandson. It is now part of Champagne.
VDSainte-Croix
Small town in the Vaud Jura at the foot of the Chasseron, a former lordship of the Grandson family, which became the capital of the music box and of precision mechanics.
VDSergey
Sergey had only three hearths in 1331. At the foot of Mont Suchet its communal bread oven still works and its inhabitants are nicknamed the «Ours» (bears).
VDSuchy
A village ceded in 885 by Emperor Charles the Fat, whose inhabitants were freed from mortmain in 1367 by Othon de Grandson-Belmont.
VDSuscévaz
Its name, «Subsilva» in 1140, means «below the forest», after its place on the wooded slopes of Mont de Chamblon. A merger with Mathod is planned for 2027.
VD · Merger 2011Tévenon
Four villages joined in 2011 under the name of the alpine pasture above their hillside.
VDTreycovagnes
At the Reformation the church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste at Treycovagnes was destroyed and a school was built in its place.
VDUrsins
Farming village between the Orbe plain and the Menthue valley, an important Gallo-Roman religious centre, whose Saint-Nicolas church stands on an ancient temple.
VDValeyres-sous-Montagny
Above Valeyres stand the ruins of Montagny castle, destroyed in 1475 during the Burgundian Wars.
VDValeyres-sous-Rances
Above the Orbe plain, Valeyres-sous-Rances became under Bern a country retreat of the Manuel and later the Bonstetten families, owners of the former fortified house of the Gallera.
VDValeyres-sous-Ursins
In 1415 six neighbouring communities agreed to build a leper house together on the territory of this village south-east of Yverdon.
VDVallorbe
Well over a thousand workers, mostly Italian, dug the Mont-d'Or tunnel, opened in 1915 together with the border station that made Vallorbe a major crossing into France.
VDVaugondry
No more than about fifteen houses and a documented peak of 76 inhabitants in 1850, yet the hamlet of Vaugondry is listed in the ISOS as a site of national importance.
VDVaulion
Village founded at the end of the 11th century by runaway serfs from Burgundy, whom the prior of Romainmôtier took in in 1097 to clear the land around the Nozon.
VDVillaret
In 1477 Yolande of Savoy made this hamlet of Belmont-sur-Yverdon a noble fief for her castellan Claude d'Arnex. The small community, with 6 hearths in 1404, had vanished by 1550.
VDVillars-Burquin
Long called « Chez le Roy » after a village family, Villars-Burquin has kept the nickname « Roitelets » (wrens) for its inhabitants, the bird in its coat of arms since 1925.
VDVillars-Epeney
The name Espiney first referred to a stream, mentioned in 1177. The hamlet of a dozen houses only appears in 1549 and became a municipality in 1765.
VDVillars-sous-Champvent
Built on the remains of an important Roman villa, the hamlet of Villars-sous-Champvent reached its highest known figure in 1950: 62 inhabitants.
VDVugelles-La Mothe
For centuries the Fontannet spring powered a paper mill (from 1526), a mill, forges and later fine-stone workshops for watchmaking at Vugelles.
VDVuitebœuf
At the start of the salt road climbing to Sainte-Croix, Vuitebœuf grew thanks to through traffic and gradually overtook Peney, the former centre of the parish.
VD · TownYverdon-les-Bains
Second city of the canton, heir to Celtic and Roman Eburodunum, a Savoyard new town founded in 1260 around its castle, where Pestalozzi taught from 1805 to 1825.
VDYvonand
The prehistoric lakeshore settlements of Yvonand-Le Marais are a Unesco World Heritage Site, and the large Roman villa of Mordagne left its remains on the other bank of the Menthue.