Venues & stages

Type

Château (events venue)

Address

Grande Place 1, Vevey

Not open to visitors, but available to rent

Set on Vevey's Grande Place, facing Lake Geneva, the Château de l'Aile owes its neo-Gothic silhouette to the banker Jacques-Édouard Couvreu, who had the building rebuilt between 1840 and 1846 to designs by, among others, the Vevey architect Philippe Franel. Listed as a cultural property of national importance, long owned by the municipality and then restored between 2008 and 2014, it now houses private apartments and serves as a prestigious setting for receptions and events. From 18 to 21 October 2022, its drawing rooms provided the backdrop for a long series of filmed interviews between Phil Collins and his son Nic, himself a drummer, produced by the platform Drumeo. Those days gave rise to the documentary “Phil Collins: Drummer First” (2024), in which the musician tells his entire career from the sole point of view of the drums.

A fairy-tale château where Phil Collins set down his drums

The neo-Gothic manifesto of a well-travelled banker

The Château de l'Aile is medieval in looks only. Its slender turrets, openwork gables and lacework of carved molasse date from the 1840s: a Romantic stage set, born of the nineteenth century's taste for an imagined Middle Ages. The Vevey banker Jacques-Édouard Couvreu, marked by a journey to England, had a seventeenth-century castle swept away to raise in its place, between 1840 and 1846, this English-inspired neo-Gothic fantasy.

He entrusted the designs to three architects: Philippe Franel of Vevey, Henri Perregaux of Lausanne and Jacques-Louis Brocher of Geneva. Listed as a cultural property of national importance, the building closes the lake side of the Grande Place, right next to the Théâtre de Vevey visible on the right of the photograph.

From squat to rescue at the ballot box

Bought by the municipality of Vevey in 1988, the château then went through two uncertain decades, occupied for a time by squatters. Its fate was finally settled at the ballot box: in 2007 the people of Vevey voted to sell it to the German businessman Bernd Grohe, on condition that he restore it.

The restoration, carried out from 2008 to 2014, gave the building back its façades and decoration and turned it into upmarket apartments coupled with a reception venue. Standing at the edge of the Grande Place, where the arena of the Fête des Vignerons rises once a generation, the château serves as a prestigious setting for the festival's receptions and, the rest of the time, for weddings and private events.

October 2022: a drummer's testament

It was in these restored drawing rooms that Phil Collins returned to the Riviera, from 18 to 21 October 2022. Retired from the stage at the end of the final Genesis tour, he spoke at length before the camera of the teaching platform Drumeo, alongside his son Nic, himself a drummer.

Those four days of interviews gave rise to “Phil Collins: Drummer First”, a documentary of nearly two hours released in December 2024, in which the pop idol tells his story for once as a drummer, from his beginnings behind the kit to handing over to Nic. The choice of Lake Geneva was no accident: the musician has lived on the Vaud shore of the lake since the mid-1990s.

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Related artists :Phil Collins