Men and women dressed in medieval costumes with swords in hand, ascend the stone staircase to the square, as I am lost in a time warp. This was not what I expected to encounter in Geneva, Switzerland’s second largest and its most cosmopolitan city, at the southernmost tip of crescent-shaped Lake Leman, dividing France and Switzerland and the largest lake in Europe.
We are in Geneva, as it celebrates the L’Escalade Festival, which commemorates the city winning over an attack by the Catholic state of Savoy in 1602. According to local legend, Mother Royaume, a cook, threw a cauldron of simmering vegetable soup on the head of a Savoyard to prevent him from climbing the ramparts of Geneva. Parades in medieval costumes, making a replica of the cauldron, and other celebrations make the city lively.
Though most people associate the town with the veneer of diplomacy and expensive watches, the left bank of the Rhone has the Old town called the Vieille Ville located on a hillside, packed with 2000 years of history, with a warren of cobblestone lanes, stately grey stone buildings with ornate facades, antique stores, museums, art galleries, cafes and secret passages.
The city came under the rule of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the second century BC, and grew when Julius Caesar used the city to station his troops. The city was encircled by vast ramparts and fortifications until the 19th century.
We walk through the narrow lanes of the old town through the north, starting at the Place de La Madeleine, steeped in legends and history. The Temple De la Madeleine, with its beautiful stained glass windows, played a major role in the Reformation movement and dates back to the 15th century. It’s been the main place of worship for Geneva’s Swiss-German community, since the 1960s.
History whispers from every corner of the old town. There are several secret passages with gates that could be locked, that were built to enable the soldiers to quickly move across the town and also allow the residents to move to the inner parts of the city quickly, in the past. Today, these passages are lined with offices and shops.
We check out several passages—from the Degree passage that brings you swiftly from St Pierre Cathedral to Place du Bourg-de-Four, to Passage de Monetier, a small alleyway that covers about a hundred meters at the foot of the ancient ramparts of the city, with the entrance at the historic Rue Perron. Our local guide Emilie Bissardon, explains that this passage is only open to the public, on one weekend in December.
The Passage de la Petite-Corraterie, which ends in a wall with a sculpture of Dame Piaget, has an interesting back story. Legend has it that during the L’Escalade, Dame Piaget the wife of a silk merchant, had a key to the alleyway gate beneath her building. Thinking quickly, she leant from her window and threw the keys of the locked gates to the soldiers who could burst open through the gates, and fire and defeat the Savoyards.
Place du Bourg-de-Four, is the oldest square in the city, dating back to the 9th century, which is located on the site of an old Roman marketplace, and was later a cattle market. Today it’s a popular meeting place for locals, and the vibrant heart of the old town, surrounded by tall, narrow houses with many windows, and charming cafes surrounding a marble fountain, where I linger over a coffee. “When many Protestant refugees came to Geneva and the city was reaching saturation point, the city had to go vertical and that’s the origin of these tall, narrow houses with many windows,” says Emilie.
Not far from here is the magnificent St. Pierre Cathedral, which stands sentry over the Old Town; this was built on the site of a Roman Temple from the 4th century, and these excavations can be visited below the Cathedral. At the altar here, was where John Calvin, the Protestant reformer, preached in the 16th century. We rest our feet here, watching a mini tourist train trundle by.
Close to the Cathedral is the city hall that today houses the cantonal government—an impressive 15th-century Renaissance building, with a large courtyard, stocky pillars and a cobbled ramp to the upper floors. Emilie explains that, in the past, you could ride horseback or by sedan chair to the third floor! This is the venue where important documents were signed, from the first Geneva Convention, to the act that founded the International Red Cross.
We stop to see the frescoes in the Old Arsenal by Alexandre Cingria with a display of old canons—the mosaics portray the history of the town starting with Caesar’s arrival in the city in 58 BC. To round off our exploration of the old town, we have lunch at the historic Les Armures restaurant, with wood panelling and muskets on the walls, tucked between Tavel House and the old Arsenal in a 17th-century building, that serves fish filets from Lake Geneva and raclettes and fondue. Royalty and celebrities have dined here down the ages. The historic ambience is the perfect place to wind down after a walk through the charming old town.