La Tour-de-Peilz

La Tour-de-Peilz is a municipality of about 12,000 inhabitants in Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut District in the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, located on Lake Geneva between Montreux and Vevey, whose agglomeration counts some 80,000 inhabitants. Celtic, Roman and Burgundian remains have been excavated in the area. In the Middle Ages it was under the bishops of Sion and the counts of Geneva until it was acquired by Savoy. On 8 June 1476, after a heroic resistance, its inhabitants were massacred by mountain warriors from the Haut-Simmental led by the Bernese Niklaus Zurkinden, and later the canton of Bern conquered the village with the rest of the region; it remained part of Bern until the foundation of the canton of Vaud in 1803. The municipality covers about 3.2 square kilometres, two thirds of it built up.