Together with the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) the university forms a vast campus at the shores of Lake Geneva.

The university was founded in 1537 as the Schola Lausannensis, one year after Bern annexed the territory of Barony of Vaud from the Duchy of Savoy, as a school of theology with the purpose of training pastors for the church.

[2] It enjoyed great renown in its early years for being the first and, until the establishment of the Academy of Geneva in 1559, the only French-language Protestant school of theology.

It entered into a period of decline in the following years, after several members of the academic staff, including rector Theodore Beza and Pierre Viret, resigned their seats to join the newly established Academy of Geneva.

Starting in 1837, the academy was modernized by the authorities of the canton of Vaud, becoming a secular institution divided into three faculties (letters and sciences, theology, and law).

[2] In 1909, Rudolphe Archibald Reiss founded the first school of forensic science in the world: the Institut de police scientifique.

From 1970, the university moved progressively from the old centre of Lausanne, around the Cathedral and Château, to its present site at Dorigny.

On 1 January 2014, the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) was integrated into the University of Lausanne.

Neoclassical school of thought in economics founded at the University of Lausanne by two of its professors: Léon Walras and Vilfredo Pareto.