The Lavaux Vine­yard Ter­races, stretch­ing for about 30 km along the south-fac­ing north­ern shores of Lake Gene­va from the Chateau de Chillon to the east­ern out­skirts of Lau­sanne in the Vaud region, cov­er the low­er slopes of the moun­tain­side between the vil­lages and the lake. Although there is some evi­dence that vines were grown in the area in Roman times, the present vine ter­races can be traced back to the 11th cen­tu­ry, when Bene­dic­tine and Cis­ter­cian monas­ter­ies con­trolled the area. It is an out­stand­ing exam­ple of a cen­­turies-long inter­ac­tion between peo­ple and their envi­ron­ment, devel­oped to opti­mize local resources so as to pro­duce a high­ly val­ued wine that has always been impor­tant to the econ­o­my.