Geneva: Events

Geneva's best-known festival is l'escalade, held on 11 December, when enormous amounts of chocolate and marzipan are consumed. L'escalade celebrates the day in 1602 when one of the invading Duke of Savoy's soldiers was thwarted by an unhappy housewife who poured her boiling cauldron of vegetable soup over him and then smashed it over his head. Several times. Sensibly, Genevans mark the occasion by eating chocolate instead of vegetable soup. Apart from the chocolate scoffing, there are torch-lit processions in period costume, a huge bonfire in the cathedral square, and then even more chocolate scoffing.

The Fêtes de Genève is held over two weekends in August with parades, open-air concerts and fireworks, while the Bol d'Or in mid-June sees Lake Geneva come alive with the bobbing white sails of more than 600 yachts racing to the far end of the lake and back.