Colladon's instruments
Kit from the 1826 experiment measuring the speed of sound in Lake Geneva.
Franck Schneider — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). — CC BY-SA 4.0
On its own: no. With its surroundings: yes. The right way to use it is as a stop on a **right-bank walk**: start at the Pont du Mont-Blanc, walk north along the quays for about half an hour through the public gardens, spend half an hour free inside the villa, then carry on to the equally free **Botanical Garden**. That is a half-day itinerary at almost no cost in a city where everything is expensive — and that is its real value.
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A small, **free** museum inside the Villa Bartholoni, a white neoclassical villa built in 1830 to designs by the French architect Félix-Emmanuel Callet as a summer house for a Parisian banking family. It stands in the **Perle du Lac** park on the right bank, directly above the water of Lake Geneva, and was restored between 1985 and 1992 to receive the collections of the museum, founded in 1964. What is displayed are scientific instruments from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, come down from the laboratories of Geneva's own scientists: sundials, telescopes, microscopes, thermometers, barometers and electrostatic machines. Among them are instruments of **Horace-Bénédict de Saussure**, who invented the hair hygrometer and offered the reward that led to the first ascent of Mont Blanc in 1786, and of **Jean-Daniel Colladon**, who in 1826 measured the speed of sound in water on this very lake: a submerged bell struck from one boat together with a flash of gunpowder, an observer more than ten kilometres away timing the gap. His figure of about 1,435 metres per second sits very close to the value accepted today. The museum is genuinely small, its labels mainly French, and the visit runs thirty to sixty minutes. But the whole package — a handsome villa, a lakeside park, free entry — is worth an outing on a clear day. Combine it with the free **Botanical Garden** a short walk north, or walk back south along the shore to the Jet d'Eau.
Kit from the 1826 experiment measuring the speed of sound in Lake Geneva.
From the laboratory of the hair hygrometer's inventor.
An 1830 neoclassical summer house in a park on the water.
Rue de Lausanne 128, Villa Bartholoni, Parc de la Perle du Lac, 1202 Geneva