THE FLON

The Flon warehouses district is currently very popular with Lausanne's various cultural circles and real estate developers, and contrasts sharply with the medieval city.

In the ^19th century, goods arrived from the port of Ouchy or from the railway station. Businessman Jean-Jacques Mercier facilitated traffic by digging the metro. Goods were deposited on rails and taken up the Bel-Air elevator (which today leads to the Fnac) to continue westwards to the Chauderon station. Traffic ceased in 1974, and the former warehouses were taken over by culture, before becoming objects of covetousness for major groups. Today, the ^19th-century Flon buildings that have survived include the N2O bar and the Butterfly store. For the Mercier family, incorporated as LO Holding, Flon has long been a hole in the ground. In several former warehouses, the cellars are magnificent and still undeveloped. Enter, for example, the former customs warehouse at no. 17 (opposite Maniak): first you'll see a large glass roof and, in the basement, a vast space under arches that serves simply as a storeroom for the ground-floor stores.

From the Flon, you can see the recently renovated Métropole Lausanne shopping center building just above, as well as the Bel-Air tower, Switzerland's first "skyscraper", which appears here much longer than it is high. You can also see the Maison du peuple, sometimes humorously referred to as the "Kremlin". It houses the headquarters of the Socialist Party and the People's Workers' Party.

Today, in addition to art galleries, the Flon district is home to the well-known MAD and Atelier volant nightclubs (opened in the 1980s), trendy bars like Pur and N2O, high-rent apartments and studios for photographers and architects, a jazz school, and a growing number of stores.

As a result, Flon has earned its letters of nobility, and many Lausanneers say that their city's new alternative center is now moving further west. Artists tend to move towards Sébeillon and Malley. The disused Sévelin train station has been transformed into a vocational school, and culture has taken over the former warehouses: the Docks, the Sévelin 36 dance school, the Arsenic theater. Further afield, in Malley, the Théâtre Kléber Méleau is located in the former gasworks.

In winter, a free skating rink is set up on the Flon.