Reformation Wall

Geneva's monumental tribute to the Protestant Reformation and its leaders

The Reformation Wall (Mur des Réformateurs) runs for 100 metres along the outer wall of the old city in the Parc des Bastions, directly below the Vieille Ville. Built between 1909 and 1917 to mark the 400th anniversary of Calvin's birth, the bas-relief carvings depict the four principal figures of the Geneva Reformation — John Calvin, Guillaume Farel, Theodore Beza, and John Knox — each standing four and a half metres tall, flanked by secondary figures and inscriptions in French.

The park around the wall is pleasant and free to enter, with large chess boards on the lawn where games are often in progress on fine days. The Geneva motto carved into the wall — "Post Tenebras Lux" (After Darkness, Light) — gives the Reformation's self-understanding in three words. The park connects to Place Neuve, just north, which has the Grand Théâtre, the Conservatoire, and the Musée Rath around its edges.

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The four central figures depicted on the wall — Calvin, Farel, Beza, and Knox — are all rendered at precisely 4.5 metres tall, which may seem modest for heroes of a world-historical movement. But the sculptors deliberately kept them human-sized rather than heroic: Calvin himself had insisted that no images of him be made, and the reformers' theology was deeply suspicious of the cult of images. The wall's austerity is itself a kind of argument.

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