In the 1890s, when French baron Pierre de Coubertin set about reviving the ancient Greek sporting games first recorded at Olympia in 776 BCE, he thought about following classical precedent and giving his modern Olympics a single permanent location, too. But instead of considering his own birthplace (Paris) or perhaps the world's most populated city at the time (London) as a potential permanent host city, he imagined staging his modern Games in and around a small Swiss city he had fallen in love with on the shores of Lake Geneva: Lausanne. Like many past visitors – from Charles Dickens to long-time resident David Bowie – Coubertin fell in love with Lausanne's dramatic waterside setting framed by craggy Alpine peaks and striking Unesco-inscribed hillside vineyards. Arriving in the city in 1913, Coubertin gushed with enthusiasm for a place he described as "spread out delightfully along the shores of the lake, crowned by forests, provided with every conceivable sporting possibility."