Every December, the city celebrates the defeat of a Vatican-backed attack on its walls in 1602, but the Pope eventually had the last laugh as the city continued to welcome refugees and immigrants.
By 1863, Geneva was majority Catholic.
That year, one of the city's Protestant elite founded the International Committee of the Red Cross, inspiring the first Geneva Convention on the tercentenary of Calvin's death—and the formation of its Muslim counterpart, the Red Crescent, some sixty years later.
Geneva is now home to the largest United Nations' office outside New York, the World Council of Churches, the headquarters of more than fifty multinationals and countless NGOs, as well as CERN—the research center where the World Wide Web was invented and physicists have conducted experiments in search of the 'God particle.'
These are all the legacies of Calvinism, even if the tourist bumf is reluctant to link them to the dour, foreign God-botherer who believed in self-sacrifice, torture and the eternal hereafter.
SIN CITY?
And as hard as it is to make Geneva sound sexy, that doesn't mean the city's boring.
On the contrary, my advice is: Don't go there at all! Save your eternal soul!
For Geneva's stately grey architecture and restrained elegance hide all the makings of a decadent playground, depending on your bank account and sense of self-control.
Every creature comfort can be catered to, with countless vices to stave off boredom.
Modern Geneva really is a 'Petit Paris,' without the poor to nag your conscience.
In fact, if it weren't for the atavistic Calvinism, Geneva would probably be Sin City.
Prostitution and gambling have been legal for years, and strip bars and casinos brazenly advertise on billboards and bus stops, including posters for a joint called Moulin Rouge showing a woman's naked legs and backside, accentuated with red stilettos and a bloom clutched somewhere that doesn't naturally smell of roses.
No comments:
Post a Comment