Palais de Rumine , a bombastic neo-Renaissance pile (1904) where the Treaty of Lausanne (finalising the break-up of the Ottoman Empire after WWI) was signed in 1923, safeguards the city’s fine arts museum. Works by Swiss and foreign artists, ranging from Ancient Egyptian art to Cubism, are displayed, but the core of the collection is made up of works by landscape painter Louis Ducros (1748–1810). During temporary exhibitions (many with free admission), the permanent collection is often closed.
The same ticket covers admission to the palace’s other smaller museums, which cover natural history, zoology (with an almost-6m-long stuffed great white shark and a dusty-looking menagerie of taxidermied critters from around the globe), geology, coins, archaeology and history. The latter gives an overview of the history of the Vaud canton from the Stone Age to modern times.
