3-034-800 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Old tanneries on the Rhone, Geneva, 1871. 'The city of Geneva...owes more of its attraction for travellers to the scenery of the Lake and of the Rhone, in its immediate neighbourhood, than to any fine architectural structures. The shores of the Lake, not flat, but gently rising from the water's edge, are studded with elegant villas in gardens, which have quite an English aspect...Far-off views of the Jura, and even of Mont Blanc, and other Alps of Savoy, may be got in clear weather from some convenient places. The promenades on the ramparts, and on the right bank of the river, in the Quartier des Bergues, united with the other parts of the city by two handsome bridges, communicating with the small island where Julius Caesar built a Roman fort, are very pleasant...There are are some picturesque old-fashioned buildings still left on the banks of the river at Geneva. The tanneries are such a relic of antiquity; but the improvements of late have caused many features of the historic Geneva, associated with Calvin and Knox, with Voltaire and Rousseau, and with other illustrious scholars, exiled patriots, and philosophers, to vanish from the eyes of inquiring tourists. There is comparatively little here to remind us of the past'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.