Switzerland Guide
Geneva
The Rive Gauche
Geneva's Rive Gauche (Left Bank, or southern bank) is lined with the blank facades of dozens of bank buildings, behind which the arrow-straight Rue du Rhône – principal thoroughfare of Les Rues-Basses, once a dockside slum and now Geneva's fanciest shopping district – stretches a kilometre or more east, crammed with jewellers, department stores and designer boutiques. Traffic streams over the Pont du Mont-Blanc beneath the spectacular view of Europe's highest mountain (4807m), which stands some 80km distant. At the foot of the bridge is the charming lakeside Jardin Anglais, focused around a double statue celebrating Geneva's joining the Confederation in 1815, a fountain, bandstand and famous Flower Clock.
West of the Pont du Mont-Blanc, past the bustling Place du Molard with its medieval tower, is the pedestrianized Pont des Bergues, with a footpath midway along it linking to a tiny island, the Île Rousseau, formerly a bastion and now a minuscule public garden graced with a statue of the Genevan philosopher. With such controversy surrounding Rousseau, even half a century after his death the city authorities were grudging in honouring him, and the statue, behind its sheltering camouflage of trees, originally faced the empty lake – to all intents and purposes cut off from view until the Pont du Mont-Blanc was built alongside in 1861.