The rooms
Furniture, portraits and objects reassembling Voltaire's Geneva years.
"Les Délices" — the delights — is the name **Voltaire** gave the house he lived in at Geneva from March 1755 to October 1760, after leaving the Prussian court. It was then a country property outside the city walls; today a residential quarter surrounds it. The city of Geneva bought it in 1929, it opened to the public in 1952, and it is now one of the sites of the Geneva Library. Inside is a research library on Voltaire and the Enlightenment — some 25,000 printed volumes, more than a thousand manuscripts and a large body of images — alongside a permanent display of portraits, furniture and objects that reassemble the man's life in these rooms. The most interesting question the place answers is why he left. Voltaire wanted to stage plays; Calvinist Geneva banned theatre; his friction with the city's pastors grew until, in 1760, he moved to **Ferney**, just over the French border, where he lived for some eighteen years beyond Geneva's reach. And here is the practical warning that changes your plan: this is **not a museum you can walk into**. The house opens for a free public guided visit once a month, in French, and otherwise by arrangement for groups; the library serves researchers on request. If you do not speak French, or the date does not match your trip, you are looking at a closed door with a pleasant public garden around it — nothing more.
Furniture, portraits and objects reassembling Voltaire's Geneva years.
25,000 volumes and over a thousand manuscripts, for researchers.
Geneva's theatre ban pushed him over the French border in 1760.
Start from the calendar before you book your trip, not after: the house opens for a **free public guided visit once a month, in French**, without registration and with limited places, so arrive early. If you are a group, email them to arrange your own slot — that is the surest way in. If the dates do not fit your trip, or you do not read French comfortably, drop it without regret: the same time at the International Museum of the Reformation or the Museum of Art and History will tell you far more about intellectual Geneva.
Because Calvinist Geneva banned the theatre, and Voltaire was a playwright before anything else and would not accept that his work could not be staged. His campaign to soften the ban set off an open quarrel with the city's pastors, and he saw that he was living under an authority that could not tolerate him. In 1760 he moved to the estate of **Ferney**, a few kilometres inside French territory — close enough to stay in Geneva's orbit, far enough to write what he liked. He remained there some eighteen years, almost until his death.
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Rue des Délices 25, 1203 Geneva