The ‘guet’, the night watchman of Lausanne
When the bell of Lausanne cathedral strikes ten, work begins for Alexandre Schmid, who shouts the hour to the east, north, west and south (in that order). It is his job as the guet, the night watchman who has been keeping watch over the city for over 600 years. Today he is a symbol of local identity.
Schmid puffs, pushing hard on the pedals of his bicycle. Then, when he is completely out of breath, he gets off and pushes it up the steep streets of Lausanne. His destination, the cathedral, is at the top; he lives at the bottom, near the station.
It’s a rainy and windy evening and it’s 9:45pm. There’s no hurry. There’s still time to lean the old bike against a wall, to climb the 153 steps of the bell tower, to put on the felt cap and the black cloak. To put on the guet.
‘C’est le guet. Il a sonné dix!’
Alexandre Schmid, 34, has been the chief guardian of Lausanne’s Notre-Dame Cathedral for about two years. It’s a profession from a bygone past.
“It’s a magnificent place. I marvel every time I go up here. I enjoy a unique view of the city. I love Lausanne,” he says, his raven beard illuminated by the dim light of the lantern hanging from the parapet. Suddenly, the wind carries the striking of the hours of the Saint-François church clock. It’s almost time.
Schmid sticks his index fingers in his ears. Soon afterwards, the cathedral’s centuries-old bell strikes ten times. Up here, 30 metres above the base of the imposing Gothic building, it is deafening. When the echo dies away above the rooftops of the city, it is up to him to announce the hour. He puts his funnel-shaped hands in front of his mouth and shouts at the top of his lungs to the east: “C’est le guet. Il a sonné dix! Il a sonné dix!” (“It’s the guet. Ten o’clock has struck! Ten o’clock has struck!”).
Then he takes the lantern off the hook, moves to the north side and repeats the announcement. The west and south follow.
>>Hear the night watchman announce 10pm in this video from the City of Lausanne:
External Content
Guardian of a centuries-old tradition
For one hour, his task is over. Schmid re-enters the loge du guet (the guardian’s lodge), indicated by a wooden plaque hanging on the door. It is a kind of alcove, a room of a few square metres with wooden walls, heated by an electric stove.
He hangs his hat and cloak on a nail. “The term guet comes from the French verb guetter (to watch over, to keep an eye on),” explains Schmid, who spends five nights a week, from 10pm to 2am, at the top of the bell tower, punctuating the night with his voice. He neither keeps watch nor rings the bells; he is simply the guardian of a centuries-old tradition.
“The first documented mention of the presence of a guet de la cathédrale dates back to November 4, 1405. However, this figure existed much earlier. His main task was to sound the alarm in the event of a fire,” says the current incumbent, who studied history at university and now manages to combine his passion for the past with a profession that is lost in the mists of time. “The guet also had to ring and shout the hours, as well as watch over public order in the city.”
More
The Zytglogge, the mechanical heart of the city of Bern
“In the Middle Ages,” he continues, “houses were made almost entirely of wood and straw. The only way to cook or get warm was to light a fire, and so there were blazes all the time. When this happened, the only way to put them out was to form a human chain and pass buckets of water to each other. It was ineffective and often entire neighbourhoods burnt.”
Pillar of the fire surveillance system
One of the most serious fires in Lausanne occurred in 1405: most of the houses around the cathedral went up in flames. According to a report of the time, drawn up by the neighbourhood delegates and the city’s bishop, one of the causes was the delay by the sentries in raising the alarm. “When he saw a fire, the cathedral watchman would take a hammer and strike a bell to warn the population,” Schmid says. “But that night he realised too late. He had probably fallen asleep.”
Although he was not the only one keeping watch. Someone else was on lookout in the bell tower of the church of Saint-François. There were other watchmen, “on the ground”, who made the rounds in the neighbourhoods. “They communicated with each other by shouting, signalling outbreaks and announcing the time. It was also a way of making sure that a colleague had not fallen asleep on his watch, perhaps after staying too long in a tavern,” Schmid explains.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, the cathedral night watchman remained the mainstay of Lausanne’s fire watch system. Over the decades, however, it gradually lost importance. In 1907 the alarm was entrusted to the city sirens and no longer to the guet, who nevertheless continued to guard the tower day and night. The real change came after the war, with the installation of an automatic clock and a mechanised system for ringing the bells. From then on, the function of the guet was limited to announcing the hours. In the past, it was a service mainly for those who could not read the time or count.
Part of the city’s identity
From 1960, faced with an increasing difficulty in finding candidates for this position, the Lausanne authorities decided to limit its employment to the 10pm to 2am slot.
“Since the usefulness of the guet has been stripped of any real substance, this role has moved into another category – certainly more fantastical, perhaps more mythical. The watchman becomes a timeless figure who amazes and fascinates,” reads the description on the website of Living Traditions in SwitzerlandExternal link.
Is it perhaps this apparent futility that makes the guet such a legendary character, we ask Schmid somewhat provocatively. “I think it’s the fact of being out of time that makes this figure so fascinating,” he replies.
‘The meaning of this profession lies above all in the link with the past and in the affection that the people of Lausanne feel towards it. It’s an element that helps shape the identity of the city and its inhabitants, making us say: ‘Elsewhere is not like here!'”
And indeed, the cities in Europe with a night watch active 365 days a year can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Ripon in the UK, Krakow in Poland, Ystad in Sweden, and Annaberg and Celle in Germany.
In addition to Alexandre Schmid, there are also seven deputy guardians, including Cassandre Berdoz, who in 2021 became the first woman in history to hold this position.
Although technical progress has rendered the original function of the guet useless, Lausanne has never wanted to give up its night watch.
In 1946, the moving of the guet‘s room from the second to the first floor of the tower caused great concern among the inhabitants. They feared it was the beginning of the disappearance of this figure they were so fond of.
In 1960, when the authorities decided to limit the presence of the guet on the tower to four hours at night, from 10pm to 2am, headlines in local newspapers included “Sauvons le guet” (Save the guet) and “Serait-ce l’agonie du guet?” (Will this be the death throes of the guet?). A sign of the deep attachment of the people of Lausanne to a tradition that has become part of the town’s identity.
No regrets
A lover of tranquillity and books, Alexandre Schmid had no doubts when he found out that the city was looking for a new cathedral keeper.
He picked up the baton from Renato Häusler, who, from 1987 to 2002 as deputy, then as incumbent until 2024, had devoted almost four decades to this function. Inside a cupboard door in the tower room, Häusler left a silent trace of the time spent in the tower: a very long series of dashes, marked with a biro, one for each night spent above the roofs of Lausanne. There were 3,398 dashes.
After chatting for almost an hour, Schmid gets up, picks up his hat and cloak from the nail. He has to go back outside to shout the hour. At the door, we ask whether, two years on, he regrets his decision. “No, never,” he says with a smile, as he scans the city lights at his feet. “To leave such a place, I’d have to find another one just as exceptional. But I don’t think it exists.”
More
Edited by Zeno Zoccatelli. Translated from Italian by AI/ts
How we translate with AI
We use automatic translation tools, such as DeepL and Google Translate, for some content.
Each translated article is carefully reviewed by a journalist for accuracy. Using translation tools gives us the time for more in-depth articles.
Learn more here about how we work with AI.
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.