Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Geneva: a walk in the footsteps of the “Confessions”

Rousseau is sixteen when, on a sudden whim, he decides to leave his hometown, intending never to return. Yet Geneva continues to haunt him throughout his life. The earliest experiences of his Genevan childhood contain the seeds of all his later work. On this tour, we will follow young Jean-Jacques step by step through early eighteenth-century Geneva, which he evokes so vividly in Book One of the Confessions.

Architecture and urban planning in Geneva in Rousseau’s time

During the 18th century, Geneva underwent a true architectural revival. Beginning in the final decades of the previous century, this movement reshaped both the upper and lower town, in public buildings as well as private homes. Construction projects such as the General Hospital, the Temple de la Fusterie, the cathedral portico, and the Lutheran church reflect a desire to meet the community’s needs, while refined patrician residences reveal the great families’ pursuit of distinction, fueled by trade and banking. More modest dwellings also helped, in their own way, to project the image of a prosperous, orderly republic. Framed by the life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), this itinerary invites us to discover the period’s most significant buildings.