Geneva's Green Side: Parks, Gardens and Quick Escapes

For a city with this many international institutions, Geneva is remarkably good at doing nothing outdoors. The parks are numerous, largely free, and arranged along a lakefront that the city has kept stubbornly public — and the best of them are the ones visitors walk past on the way to somewhere else.

Key facts

• Almost everything here is free, including the botanical gardens.
• Best months: rose gardens peak in June; the lake swimming season runs roughly May to September.
• Transport: most of these are reachable on foot or by a single tram or bus.
• Cross-border: two of the escapes below are in France. Carry your passport.

In the city

Parc des Bastions sits just below the Old Town and is the one locals actually use: chestnut trees, the enormous Reformation Wall carved into the old ramparts, and giant outdoor chessboards where the games run all afternoon and the commentary is free.

Parc La Grange and Parc des Eaux-Vives run together along the left bank of the lake, and hold the city's rose garden — several thousand plants, at their best in early summer, with the water below and the Jura beyond.

The Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques, on the right bank near the international quarter, is free, quietly excellent, and includes an arboretum and a small animal park that children find far more interesting than the United Nations next door.

On the water

Bains des Pâquis is a public bathing pier reaching into the harbour, and the most democratic place in Geneva: swimmers, sunbathers, a sauna in winter, a cheap buvette, and the Jet d'Eau in the foreground of everything. Entry costs very little.

The Jardin Anglais nearby holds the Flower Clock, planted afresh each season — touristy, admittedly, but the promenade running from it along the lake is one of the great city walks.

The one nobody finds

Pointe de la Jonction is where the green Rhône meets the grey, glacier-fed Arve, and for a stretch the two rivers run side by side without mixing. There is a footbridge, a small beach and, in summer, locals floating down the Rhône on the current. It is fifteen minutes from the centre and feels like another country.

Quick escapes

• Mont Salève, reached by cable car from Veyrier, gives you the entire lake, the city and Mont Blanc from a single terrace. It is in France, a few minutes from the tram terminus.
• Yvoire, a medieval village on the French shore, is best reached by lake boat — a slow, beautiful hour and a half.
• Bois de la Bâtie, on a wooded bluff above the Rhône, is the closest thing to a forest inside the city limits.

Tip: Take the CGN lake boat one way to Yvoire and the bus back, or the reverse. The crossing is the point, but ninety minutes each way is more lake than most people want in a day.