Lake Murten is small, shallow and warm, framed on its north side by the vine-covered whale back of Mont Vully. Under its shallows near the Vully shore lie the remains of prehistoric pile-dwelling villages, and Chenevières de Guévaux is one of them, part of the UNESCO site of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings around the Alps. Between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age, people built houses on timber posts along lake shores like this one. Waterlogged conditions preserved posts, tools, textiles and food remains for thousands of years, and the finds transformed what we know about early farming communities in Europe.
There is nothing to see from the shore except the lake itself, so the stop is about context and setting. The Vully is wine country, with small villages of stone houses where producers sell Chasselas and Pinot Noir from their cellars, and the road along the lake between Môtier and Praz is narrow and gentle, a place to cruise slowly with the windows of the old houses almost within reach. The climb up Mont Vully gives a wide view over the Three Lakes region, with the Jura on one side and, on clear days, the Bernese Alps on the other.
Across the lake, Murten is one of the most complete walled towns in Switzerland. You can walk the ramparts and look down over tiled roofs to the water. In 1476 the Swiss Confederates crushed the army of Charles the Bold of Burgundy near here, a victory that still features in Swiss history lessons. The town has fuel nearby, cafés under arcades and plenty of places to eat lake fish. Try a gâteau du Vully, a sweet bread with a sugary cream topping, from a local bakery.
Swiss rules apply: strict speed limits, unforgiving fines, and a vignette is needed if you use the motorway. Summer weekends bring cyclists and boaters, so the lanes can be busy. Late September, during the grape harvest, is perhaps the best time, when the air smells of crushed fruit and the lake turns silver in the evening light.