About two kilometres along the lakeshore from central Nyon, the Château de Prangins is a baroque country house built in the 1730s. Voltaire owned it briefly; the family of Joseph Bonaparte — Napoleon's brother and briefly King of Naples — lived here in exile in the 1810s. Since 1998 it has been the French-speaking-Switzerland branch of the Swiss National Museum, focused on Switzerland's 18th and 19th centuries: the Enlightenment, industrialisation, and the everyday life of the period.
The exhibits are presented in lived-in style — period rooms with furniture and objects rather than glass cases — and the displays are bilingual French and English. The 18th-century walled kitchen garden behind the château is the most beautiful in this part of the country: heritage vegetable varieties, espaliered fruit trees, and a small parterre tea room. Closed Mondays. The walk from Nyon railway station takes about half an hour along the lake; a frequent local bus also runs.