Geneva stacks 2,000 years into a hill: an Allobrogian settlement Caesar wrote about, a 4th-century episcopal complex, Calvin's 1541 city-state, and the 1864 Geneva Convention. These three days follow that sequence on foot, from crypt to council chamber.
Underground walkway through 4th-century double basilica, a bishop's baptistery, Allobrogian chieftain's tomb and Roman mosaics, discovered during 1976–2000 digs. Open 10:00–17:30 (Sun 12:00). Audioguide included, 90 min of catwalks.
Built before 1303, rebuilt after the 1334 fire, and Geneva's oldest surviving dwelling. Its cellars, medieval kitchen and the 1850 Magnin relief model of the pre-demolition fortified city fill four floors. Tue–Sun 11:00–18:00.
Housed in a 1721 mansion built over the cloister where Geneva voted for the Reformation on 21 May 1536. Rooms cover Calvin's consistory, printing presses, psalters and the exiles who carried the doctrine to Scotland and the Low Countries.
Geneva's oldest square, a Roman forum then a medieval livestock market, ringed by 16th-century refugee-era houses. Walk the Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville past the 1455 Town Hall ramp built wide enough for horsemen to ride up.
Completed 1936 for the League of Nations, now UN Geneva. Guided tours pass the Council Chamber with José Maria Sert's 1936 sepia murals and the Assembly Hall. Passport required at Pregny gate; book online in advance.
Daniel Berset's 12-metre, 5.5-tonne wooden chair with a shattered fourth leg, raised in 1997 by Handicap International to press states toward the Ottawa landmine treaty signed later that year. It has stood facing the UN ever since.
Three exhibitions on the movement Henry Dunant founded after Solferino in 1859, leading to the 1864 Geneva Convention. The archive of seven million WWI prisoner-of-war index cards is the emotional core. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
Gustave Revilliod's 1884 neoclassical villa housed the League of Nations secretariat's early meetings before the Palais was built. The park path down Avenue de la Paix passes ILO, WHO and the old Wilson Palace on the lakefront.
Opened 1910, Geneva's largest museum. The archaeology floor holds Egyptian, Greek and regional Roman finds; the history wing displays armour from the Escalade and the doors of the old city arsenal. Tue–Sun 11:00–18:00.
Laid out on a grid from 1772 by Turin architects for King Victor Amadeus III as a Catholic rival to Calvinist Geneva, and only annexed to Switzerland in 1816. Low Piedmontese houses, courtyards and the 1777 Sainte-Croix church survive intact.
The 1879 marble mausoleum of Duke Charles II of Brunswick, modelled on the Scaliger tombs in Verona, built because he left his fortune to Geneva on condition of a copy. The quarter behind it became the city's immigrant district after 1900.
Laid out on the 17th-century bastion earthworks that replaced the medieval walls, with Geneva's 1817 botanical garden and the 1559 Calvin-founded academy building that became the university at the park's edge.