The four giants
Calvin and companions at five metres in the hundred-metre niche.
Baba Gaby — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France — CC BY 2.0 · Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France — CC BY 2.0 · Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France — CC BY 2.0
The wall honours worldwide Calvinist reform, not Geneva's alone: Knox trained in Geneva and carried the creed to Scotland, and beside the four run reliefs for Holland, England, Hungary and Puritan America — Geneva presenting itself as mother of a network that turned half the world, with fair historical claim.
As political story, entirely: four men turned a small city into an idea's capital, and the idea into nations — the side reliefs reading as a historical strip of kings and covenants. Twenty minutes with the info panel suffices; the park rewards the rest.
The park's grand gate faces the arts square: Grand Théâtre opera, conservatory and Musée Rath, General Dufour riding its centre. Trams leave it in all directions — the park doubling as transit hinge.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
In the Bastions park below the old-town ramparts runs the Reformation Wall's hundred metres: four stone giants of five metres — Calvin, Farel, Bèze and Knox — standing robed in the wall's niche, flanked by reliefs of the movement's kings and allies and Geneva's motto, 'After darkness, light'. The monument (1909, Calvin's 400th) is European history carved as lesson — but the park around steals the sitting: lawns under giant trees, two ground chessboards with a permanent audience of watchers and commentators, and the old university building — for here Calvin's Academy, mother of Geneva's university, was born. It is the perfect summit rest between cathedral and Place de Neuve — and the summer café under the trees is among Geneva's gentlest sits.
Calvin and companions at five metres in the hundred-metre niche.
Two ground boards with standing commentary — Geneva's little theatre.
Geneva's carved motto — taken literally by the city.
Promenade des Bastions, 1204 Geneva