On the waters of Lake Geneva, an immense silver mirror in which the masts of pleasure boats wobble, reflects Geneva, the prosperous and peaceful capital of the Swiss canton to which it gives its name. It is also the most important city in French Switzerland and the second largest in the country, after Zurich.
Thus, while the sun shines the logos on top of the buildings on Rue Rhone that serve as the headquarters of the most prestigious watchmakers in the world -Rolex, Richard Mille, Chopard, Patek Phillippe…-, the Genevans rush their steps behind the trams who stop in front of the statue of Henri Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, or conscientiously play giant chess in the Parc des Bastions. Life flows calmly and enjoyable in this Geneva which, with France a stone’s throw away, houses, in addition to exquisite and exclusive proposals for residents and travelers with high purchasing power, many other proposals with culture as a stimulus.
The view of the lake, illuminated by the lights of the evening and that of the city’s buildings, is even more bucolic from the beautiful gardens of the Martin Bodmer Foundation, in Cologne, a town that is part of the Geneva metropolitan area, from whose historic center the separates a very short journey by public transport.
Cologne is a peaceful enclave of calm and quiet streets, luxury residential, some exquisite local shops or fabled places such as the Villa Diodati, the mansion where in the atrocious summer of 1816 Mary Shelley brought Frankenstein to life before her friends, including Lord Byron. It also has good restaurants -such as La Closerie (place du Manoir, 14), with its excellent proposal for seasonal cuisine and proximity of very strong Italian Apulia influences- and the first stop on our route: the Martin Bodmer Foundation (route Martin -Bodmer, 19), an authentic Noah’s Ark of universal literature.
The institution, founded in 1920 by the Swiss bibliophile and scholar Martin Bodmer, is a Borgesian dream come true. The villa, made up of two buildings and enlarged a few years ago by the prestigious architect Mario Botta to gain exhibition space, houses the impressive collection of Bodmer, who in life set out to create and treasure a compendium of the best literature ever created following the ecumenical ideal. of the Weltliterature (world literature).
To do this, he used an immense fortune inherited from his parents to acquire autographs, first editions, and incunabula, especially what he considered the five pillars of literature: the Bible, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. Today, the collection is made up of more than 160,000 bibliographic jewels, including Sumerian tablets, Bible papyri, the oldest surviving copies of the Gospel of Santiago, a Gutenberg Bible or the first edition of Luther’s theses. . Such a collection is considered the best private library in the world, only behind that of the Vatican, and for this reason it bears the distinction of Unesco as a place of memory of humanity.
Some of his most precious works are shown in the permanent collection or in temporary exhibitions, on an annual basis, which are enriched by loans from other institutions. The next one will be Trésors enluminés de Suisse, which from March 3 to July 9 will show a selection of the most impressive illustrated manuscripts from the 3rd to 16th centuries, which have never been shown to the public.
Of no less prestige is the collection of the Barbier-Mueller Museum (Rue Jean-Calvin, 10). The museum, located in a 16th-century building in the heart of the old city and founded in 1977, houses the world’s largest collection of art from world cultures in private hands, started by Josef Mueller after the First World War. Today, augmented by the foundation that runs the museum, it houses nearly 7,000 works from tribal and classical antiquity, as well as sculptures, textiles, and ornaments from cultures around the world. Although traditional arts from Africa and Oceania make up the bulk of the collection, pieces from Asia and the Americas feature prominently.
In addition to the exhibition of the permanent collection, the museum schedules two temporary exhibitions a year. Currently, it is celebrating its 45th anniversary with the exhibition Pensées invisibles, which can be visited until September 23, and which proposes a dialogue between some of the most outstanding works in the museum’s collection with some thirty works by two renowned contemporary artists,
Less than two hundred meters separate the Barbier-Mueller museum from another of Geneva’s great cultural attractions, the Rousseau House of Literature (Grand Rue 40). The building where the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in 1712 became, in 2012, the first center dedicated to literature in French Switzerland, as well as serving as a tribute and study center on one of the most famous Genevans. An audiovisual itinerary dedicated to his life and work guides us through the three floors of the building, at the entrance of which is a charming café, ideal for recharging your strength and leafing through -and acquiring- the volumes of contemporary French-Swiss authors exposed to the public. sale.
For its part, the most contemporary art has its home at MAMCO (Rue des Vieux-Grenadiers 10), the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva. Located in an imposing converted factory in the Les Savoises neighborhood, its collection is made up of more than 6,500 works, and it also has another great museum as a neighbor, that of the watchmaker Patek Phillippe. The movement of artists and students is constant in its rooms, where, in addition to works by contemporary Swiss and international artists, temporary exhibitions are exhibited in which all artistic expressions have a place -from video art to ephemeral installations-, and it is possible to also visit some of the studies of the artists granted by the museum.
The MAMCO serves as the neuralgic heart of the neighbourhood, the epicenter of the city’s creators and the perfect ecosystem for proposals such as Lovay Fine Arts to be born, a recently established alternative gallery that periodically changes location, but always using disused commercial premises. from the neighborhood A neighborhood that has in the Café de la Paix (boulevard Carl-Vogt, 61) a mandatory stop for, accompanied by its parish of liberal professionals and museum workers, enjoy its creative cuisine and its extensive list of Swiss wines at reasonable prices . This last circumstance is very noteworthy in a city like Geneva, considered one of the most expensive in the world. It should be remembered that, in addition to countless watch and pharmaceutical multinationals, more than 200 international agencies have their headquarters in the city and its surroundings.
It is impossible not to travel here without bearing in mind Jorge Luis Borges, in love with her as he was. “Of all the cities in the world, of all the intimate homelands that a man seeks to deserve throughout his travels, it is Geneva that seems to me the most conducive to happiness,” said the genius about the town that saw him study as a young and in which, decades later, he settled months before he died. The precious quote is inscribed on a plaque nailed to 28 Grand Rue, the house in the historic center where he died in 1986. Nearby is what was one of his favorite restaurants, the Restaurant de l’hôtel de ville (Grand Rue 39), which has kept its decoration unchanged for decades and where hearty portions of traditional dishes are served with some concession to continental gastronomy.
But the true place of pilgrimage for the letra wounded in search of the memory of Borges is his tomb, in the Plainpalais cemetery (also called de los Reyes by its illustrious inhabitants). In front of his tombstone, where only his name, an engraving representing some warriors and various inscriptions in Old English appear, we said goodbye to this getaway to Geneva full of culture.
