GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland’s most popular tourist attraction, the Chateau de Chillon, will welcome visitor number 20 million at some point Friday 13 September. The castle has kept statistics since 1887, a year when 5,000 visitors crossed the threshold. The highest annual figure was in 1990, with 350,000, and since then numbers have remained relatively stable at slightly fewer than the high point.
The 15th million visitor was at the castle in 1996.
The castle near Montreux will host a group of elderly persons from a home to visit that morning and the chateau will be more than usually accessible to people with reduced mobility Friday, with temporary ramps specially constructed for wheelchairs. The castle, a protected historic monument, is not normally equipped for wheelchair access.
It is just possible one of these visitors will be number 20 million, with the expectation this visitor will arrive between 11 and 14 September.