Expositions au musée de Carouge

The very name of Carouge, now a dynamic commune, hints at a crossroads. According to tradition, it derives from the Latin quadruvium, or “meeting of four ways”, harking back to the major ancient routes that once traversed the area. The earliest written references, from the thirteenth century, took various forms, such as Carrogium, Quarrouiz and Quaroggio, before settling into the present-day spelling. The name evokes a place shaped by passage and encounters, a history etched into the landscape.

For those drawn to the history of Carouge, the town’s past reveals itself in a subtle, sometimes elusive manner. The existence of Gallo-Roman or Burgundian villas has never been confirmed: excavations have uncovered only reused stone blocks and wooden structures from the twelfth century, now understood as riverbank works. The few extant medieval documents show different forms of the name Carouge.

Moreover, older influences – Gallic or Ligurian – may have helped shape this toponym. Place names for nearby sites, such as Presinge, Cara or the hamlets of Carré d’Amont and Carré d’Aval, suggest an ancient road network to which Carouge may once have belonged. While the quadruvium hypothesis remains appealing, the exact origin of the name Carouge remains uncertain, allowing room for future archaeological and linguistic exploration.

In Carouge, not a single street has ever been named after a woman. This situation, common to many cities, reflects a long-standing imbalance: the city’s memory has long been written in the masculine. Yet recent initiatives like Geneva’s 100Elles* project have helped bring the women who have shaped our past out of the shadows. In Carouge too, future urban landscapes will provide an opportunity to honour these female figures and make room for women in our place names.

Naming a street means anchoring memory within public space. It implies acknowledging a past, affirming values, and passing on a heritage. Whereas the feminisation of place names remains challenging, it has become part of a broader movement. In Geneva, the 100Elles* project, led by the association L’Escouade, has symbolically assigned street plaques to one hundred women, making it possible to rename certain thoroughfares. Not only has this initiative highlighted the rich, long-overshadowed lives of female scientists, artists, activists, workers, and many others, it is now inspiring other communes.

In Carouge, the City has taken a pragmatic and promising approach: giving its new streets women’s names rather than renaming existing ones. Thus, each new neighbourhood becomes a place where memory can unfold. Other actions embody this focus on remembrance. In 2023, the Municipal Council chamber was renamed the Jacqueline Widmer Room, honouring a woman whose commitment shaped local political and civic life. Such symbolic yet tangible choices form part of a shared transition towards a collective memory that is fairer, broader, and more representative.

Rue Blavignac both reflects the economic transformation of southern Carouge and honours Geneva architect and scholar Jean-Daniel Blavignac (1817–1876). Laid in the 1970s in the heart of the La Praille industrial zone, the street runs perpendicular to rue Jacques-Grosselin, feeding into a neighbourhood created from a former market garden plain. Its name, adopted in 1975, recalls a man devoted to local history and architectural heritage.

Educated and trained in Geneva, Jean-Daniel Blavignac was interested in architecture, heritage and popular traditions. He restored Saint-Peter’s Cathedral and published, among other things, L’Emprô genevois, a delightful anthology of local expressions and sayings, as well as a Geneva Armorial referencing coats of arms and proverbs. As an architect, he built the Maison de la Tour in Plainpalais. Subsequently, between 1867 and 1868, he designed Carouge’s four great public fountains. Located at Place du Marché, Place de la Temple, Rue Ancienne, and Rue Jacques-Dalphin (initially intended for Place d’Arve), they marked the inauguration of the city’s first municipal water-supply network. Now listed as historical monuments, these fountains are among his rare works that have withstood the passage of time. Yet despite his dedication to heritage and community life, Blavignac died impoverished and forgotten at Geneva’s Catholic Hospital in 1876, a victim of his choices and ideals.

Curving through the Pinchat plateau in a wooded sweep, chemin Henri-Baumgartner links route de Troinex with route de Drize. A quiet, residential road, it keeps alive the memory of Henri Baumgartner (1877–1953), an architect and contractor. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Baumgartner patiently shaped this area by opening new routes, mapping plots, and connecting the neighbourhood to local networks. His name evokes a restrained, thoughtful approach to urban planning, attuned to the quality of everyday life.

Until the turn of the century, Pinchat’s landscape was characterised by farmland and wooded areas. Starting in the 1890s, however, city dwellers began to seek out its tranquil greenery, triggering a slow shift towards residential life. Henri Baumgartner, who settled there, fostered this transition. A landowner, architect, and contractor, and subsequently a municipal councillor for Veyrier from 1922 to 1931, he gradually shaped the neighbourhood. He mapped roads, divided plots and installed essential infrastructure, favouring modest buildings that blended into the landscape. His patient, understated yet coherent efforts forged Pinchat’s residential identity. After he died in 1953, the commune sought to honour his legacy: in 1979, a stretch of chemin Vert was officially renamed chemin Henri-Baumgartner. This reminds us that often, urban history is also written by modest acts on a human scale – choices where the quality of life outweighs density and land yield.

The current rue Alexandre-Gavard partly follows the old route de Lancy, a rural route that used to connect Carouge to the surrounding countryside. Before it was named for Alexandre Gavard, a State Councillor and a reformer of public education, it was known as rue de Lancy. However, locals called it “chemin de la Croix”, in a reference to the great mission cross that rose nearby. Until the 1950s, the street ran from rue Jacques-Dalphin all the way to La Praille, skirting maison Montanrouge, which now houses the Musée de Carouge.

The original stretch of the street once hosted the Maison du Marquis du Vuache, one of the oldest Carouge domains. Built around 1761 by Joseph Delagrange, Marquis du Vuache and a colonel from Chambéry, the Petites Soeurs des Pauvres converted this elegant manor house in 1861 into a care-home for the elderly known as Sainte-Croix. Demolished between 1938 and 1941, it made way first for the municipal road maintenance depot and later for residential buildings and shops.

The creation of the Tours neighbourhood, which began in 1958, profoundly reshaped the area: the mission cross was taken down, and the street was shortened to its present length, running between rue Jacques-Grosselin and avenue de la Praille.

Born in 1845 in Perly-Certoux, Alexandre Gavard was a teacher, a textbook author, and a fervent champion of vocational education. Following his election to the Council of State in 1877, he founded both the Vocational School and the School of Home Economics, later co-drafting the 1886 Public Instruction Act with Georges Favon. In 1902, four years after his death, the street was named after him – a tribute to a respected educator and a committed reformer devoted to education for all.

Rue Baylon, which was opened in 1963, forms part of the orderly grid of the La Praille district, which was redesigned after the marshalling yard was relocated and road traffic increased. Running parallel to route de Saint-Julien, it now links several access routes, including chemin de la Marbrerie, chemin du Faubourg-de-Cruseilles and rue Jacques-Grosselin. Its layout reflects a functional approach to urban planning, intended to organise the neighbourhood while easing traffic around the new industrial and residential facilities. The street name, adopted in 1963, pays homage to the Baylon family, a dynasty of master faience makers active in Carouge from 1803 to 1879.

Originally from Montélimar, the Baylon family first fled to Lausanne after the Edict of Nantes was revoked before settling in Nyon, where Moïse Baylon established a faience workshop which he later handed down to his son Abraham (1778–1829). After completing his training in France, Abraham went on to manage the Herpin-Baylon manufacture in Carouge, located near the Rondeau on rue Joseph-Girard, before founding his own manufacture in 1812 on rue Caroline (now 46 bis rue Jacques-Dalphin). Despite Carouge’s incorporation into Geneva in 1816 and the ensuing customs barriers, Abraham Baylon developed a line of refined faience, signing his pieces with an impressed mark from 1813 onwards. After his death, his widow and son continued production under the name Veuve Baylon & Cie, then Veuve Baylon et Fils, until the business was sold to Honoré Picolas in 1879. The pieces crafted by the Baylon family, showcased at the Musée Ariana and the Musée de Carouge, attest to remarkable technical and artistic mastery.

Rue Daniel-Gevril, laid out in the early 1950s between route de Veyrier and rue Saint-Nicolas-le-Vieux, emerged alongside the growth of the Val d’Arve neighbourhood, itself shaped by the post-war population boom. The street name pays tribute to Daniel Gevril, a nineteenth-century Carouge painter and educator whose efforts to promote drawing classes reflected his city’s civil and educational ideals. Surrounded by schools, housing, and public spaces, rue Daniel-Gevril has kept the cultural and formative spirit that once guided its namesake.

Born in Carouge in 1803 into a family of watchmakers originally from Le Locle, Daniel Gevril trained at the Geneva Cantonal School of Drawing. A sober and meticulous portraitist, he embraced an uncluttered style, faithful to the republican spirit. Already in 1831, he advocated the introduction of a free drawing class in Carouge, a project which came to fruition in 1847 as part of the liberal reforms of public instruction. Gevril, a demanding teacher of technical drawing, saw art as a path towards intellectual emancipation. His discreet yet consistent career ended in his hometown, where he died in 1875. As the Val-d’Arve neighbourhood developed, the commune chose to name a street adjacent to schools after him. This legacy is continued through the presence of the Val-d’Arve school and the Espace pour une Pratique instrumentale (EPI), founded in 1985. Imbued with pedagogy, artistic practice, and civic commitment, rue Daniel-Gevril perpetuates the memory of an artist who felt knowledge should be a shared common good.

Chemin Jules-Vuÿ forms a residential loop in the eastern Pinchat plateau, opening onto chemin de Pinchat. Developed between 1900 and 1907 by architect Eugène Cavalli, it consists of a dozen terraced houses for middle-class, artisan or smallholder families. This functionally structured micro-neighbourhood illustrates Pinchat’s modest but thoughtful expansion at the beginning of the twentieth century. The road retains a discreet, residential character, contrasting with more built-up neighbouring areas and enduring as a tangible reminder of neighbourhood-scale urban planning for the middle classes.

Jules Vuÿ (1815–1896), after whom the street was named, was born in Malbuisson (Savoy) then moved to Carouge, where he pursued a career as a lawyer, writer and political figure. Elected to the Grand Council at the age of 27, he campaigned against the death penalty and championed secularism, the emancipation of religious minorities, and social progress. In addition to serving as Mayor of Carouge, State Councillor and National Councillor, he also co-founded the Municipal Library and the Gymnastics Society. A writer and historian, he published patriotic texts and poems, leaving behind vivid recollections of local life. Chemin Juley-Vuÿ embodies the memory of a committed humanist, whose struggles for justice, education, and human dignity remain part of Carouge’s landscape.

Chemin Charles-Poluzzi connects chemin de Pinchat to chemin des Moraines on the Carouge plateau. Laid out in the 1980s, it evokes the market-gardening past of an area long devoted to the family allotments of the Wahlen Plan during the Second World War. While open to modern urban life, the route pays tribute to an exceptional Carouge craftsman: Charles Poluzzi, a master enameller and watercolourist of mushrooms.

Born Carlo Poluzzi in 1899 in Lombardy, Charles Poluzzi settled in Carouge in 1920 after completing an apprenticeship in Geneva’s jewellery workshops. Following Swiss naturalisation in 1931, he became a renowned enameller, collaborating with Vacheron Constantin and Weber & Co. His refined touch—a mix of tradition and scientific precision—earned him an international reputation. At the same time, Poluzzi illustrated more than 700 watercolour plates of mushrooms for the Botanical Conservatory.

The lane named after him preserves the memory of a working countryside. In the 1940s, families cultivated the Campagne Blanc parcel under the Wahlen Plan, a federal programme to boost national food production. Subsequently, the parcel was repurposed to accommodate holiday chalets and, later, the lower-secondary school. When the commune named the lane in 1990, it chose to honour a discreet yet exemplary figure whose craftsmanship and curiosity reflect the spirit of Carouge itself. Even today, the stillness of the path seems to echo the serenity of his work.

Laid out at the turn of the twentieth century, rue François-Meunier connects rue des Noirettes to route des Acacias at the heart of an erstwhile district of workshops and small factories. In 1902, the commune named it after François Meunier, a native of Carouge who had set out to seek his fortune in Louisiana. After prospering in New Orleans, he displayed exceptional generosity: without heirs, he bequeathed his entire estate to his hometown, thereby entering the town’s collective memory.

Born in 1828, he grew up in a working-class family before emigrating to America. A coachman and later a grocer, he accumulated his wealth through business acumen and a frugal life. Remaining deeply committed to his roots, he drafted a will in Paris in 1887 leaving his assets to the commune. This extraordinary bequest enabled the creation of the Meunier Fund, established to support the most vulnerable. Every year, two young women from poor families received a dowry, while ten elderly male residents were granted a modest pension. When Carouge named a street in the Acacias industrial district after him in 1902, it paid tribute to an exemplary modern philanthropist. 

Chemin Fillion, a quiet dead-end lane, winds across the Pinchat plateau at the heart of a district that long remained rural. Officially named in 1981, it recalls the presence of Jean-Émile Fillion (1817–1888), a Genevan watchmaker who owned the estate occupying the site from the mid-nineteenth century onward. As a watch-case assembler—a skilled artisan of the Geneva watchmaking industry—Fillion was typical of lower middle-class figures seeking a more peaceful setting in Carouge while retaining ties to the city’s economy.

The origins of chemin Fillion—long a private way before its subsequent incorporation into the municipal road network—reflects the tensions between private ownership, shared use, and territorial memory. In 1935, the Journal de Carouge reported that “formerly communal, chemin Fillion was left untended for thirty years; the owner installed a gate and closed it.” The columnist Pierre-Eugène Vibert observed ironically that the municipality had raised no objections. A week later, an exasperated neighbour, Johannès Dérobert, wrote to the paper denouncing the influx of onlookers and the resulting “uprooted shrubs, felled trees, collapsed walls.” This spirited exchange captures the ill-defined boundary between private land and shared space on the outskirts of Carouge. Albeit modest in scale, the lane mirrors precious memories of everyday life—memories of the artisans and artists who, in their own way, helped shape Carouge.

Rue Jacques-Dalphin connects rue Ancienne to rue Caroline as it crosses the place d’Armes, following one of the foundational axes of the Sardinian town. First known as rue Caroline in the late eighteenth century, it was renamed in 1872 to honour Jacques Dalphin, a Carouge carpenter who became captain of the fire brigade. The choice commemorates an episode of Geneva’s Kulturkampf—the European movement seeking to curb the political influence of the Catholic Church. In 1867, Dalphin, acting as the State’s local representative, seized the parish church keys and handed them over to the Council of State, thereby asserting the primacy of civil authority over ecclesiastical power.

Beyond this symbolic episode, the street traces the urban and social history of Carouge. Its earliest buildings, designed in the 1780s by the architect Lorenzo Giardino—Maison Delafontaine, later the municipal library, and Maison Montanrouge, now the Musée de Carouge —bear witness to the artisanal and watchmaking vitality of the Sardinian era. Later, the Duboin brewery, followed by Champendal at no. 29b, produced la Carougeoise, the emblematic local beer. The former Chapel of Persecution, deconsecrated in 1926, became the first Theatre of Carouge in 1958, led by Louis Gaulis and Philippe Mentha. Even when the press critics judged it ‘’tired’’, the street remained a lively venue, shaped by the coexistence of workshops, shops, and homes. Today, it continues to embody the spirit of Carouge: rooted in history, proud of its traditions, and capable of reinventing itself without losing sight of its memory.

Linking rue Saint-Joseph to rue Vautier, rue Roi-Victor-Amé lies in the heart of old Carouge. Long known as Temple Street—named after the nearby Protestant church completed in 1822—it underwent a name change in 1975 to avoid confusion with the nearby Place du Temple and rue Saint-Victor. Its new designation, “Roi-Victor-Amé,” honours Victor-Amadeus III of Savoy, who founded Carouge in 1786, while remaining phonetically distinct from adjacent odonyms. Through this late reclassification, the city is acknowledging the memory of the sovereign who founded it.

Victor-Amadeus III (1726–1796), King of Sardinia, left his mark on the region when he established Carouge as a new town on Geneva’s doorstep. Prioritising both urban planning and religious tolerance, he entrusted architect Giuseppe Piacenza with designing a welcoming commercial city. Following a regular, orderly blueprint, Carouge was intended from the outset as a multiconfessional settlement, offering a Catholic counterweight to the Protestant Republic of Geneva and making the town a symbol of openness and modernity in the Age of Enlightenment. After the French conquest of 1792, the king was forced to cede Savoy and the County of Nice under the armistice of Cherasco, before passing away in Moncalieri in 1796. The decision to lend his name to a street came only in 1975, when the city was rethinking its toponymy. This gesture acknowledges a legacy long glossed over: that of a monarchical foundation absorbed into a city that subsequently became republican. By naming the street Roi-Victor-Amé, Carouge has reconnected its present to the symbolic, political act that brought it into being.

Opened in 2003 at the junction of route des Acacias and rue des Noirettes, rue Pictet-Thellusson links two structuring axes of a neighbourhood undergoing renewal. Designed as a pedestrian thoroughfare, it accompanied the arrival of the Geneva headquarters of Banque Pictet & Cie. Its name honours Jacques Pictet-Thellusson, a high-ranking officer in the service of the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia and an eighteenth-century diplomat whose career combined military distinction with political engagement in Geneva and abroad.

Born into the patrician Pictet de Pregny family, Jacques Pictet-Thellusson distinguished himself early on in the Sardinian army, rising to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and inspector general. Married to Jeanne Thellusson, he built up a diplomatic network spanning Geneva, Turin, and London. As an informal adviser to the King of Sardinia, he both intervened in European strategic affairs and participated in Geneva’s reformist circles inspired by Rousseau and Voltaire. When the Geneva Revolution failed in 1782, he was forced into exile, where he died in 1786. The street that now bears his name accompanies today’s urban development and rekindles this historical and familial memory, underscoring the role of alliances and public action in shaping social trajectories under the Ancien Régime.

Rue Joseph-Girard, running between place Sigismond and rue Ancienne, forms one of Carouge’s principal axes. Initiated in the 1880s, its layout reflects the commune’s push for modernisation and the broader urban changes of the late nineteenth century, including the bypassing of the cemetery and the opening of the communal hall. Named in 1935 to honour Joseph Girard, the street preserves the city’s industrial and social memory—from the faience manufacture to watchmaking workshops—while recalling the role of the Fidèles Compagnes de Jésus boarding school in local education.

From the outset, the street attracted renowned industrial activity. In 1802, Louis Herpin founded a faience manufacture, run by Abraham Baylon and later taken over by Dortu, Véret & Co., before its transfer to Turin in 1824. In the twentieth century, the firm Eskenazi SA, specialising in precision tooling for watchmaking, set up workshops, embodying both modern industrialisation and the neighbourhood’s enduring artisanal traditions.

The Fidèles Compagnes de Jésus boarding school, founded in 1832, shaped the area’s educational and religious life. Two successive chapels, blessed in 1860 and 1866, marked the local landscape before being dismantled and reassembled in Upper Savoy.

Joseph Girard (1815–1890), a lawyer and Geneva State Councillor, stood out through his political engagement, his involvement in the Radical Revolution of 1846, and his judicial career. His generosity toward Carouge, notably through the donation of buildings and funds, amply justified the decision to name the street after him.

Connecting rue Louis-de-Montfalcon to boulevard des Promenades, rue Jacques-Grosselin crosses avenue Vibert before feeding into the Rondeau. Initially a modest farm path known as chemin des Bâtonnets, it then became chemin du Stand, in reference to the nineteenth-century the shooting range. Since 1902, it has borne the name of Jacques Grosselin, a former mayor of Carouge. Its phased layout charts the gradual transformation of the territory: from market gardens on the outskirts through working-class suburbs to the industrial and residential districts of the twentieth century.

Until the 1930s, the street bordered the Bertrand market gardens, marking the city limits. Driven by the demographic boom of the interwar period, this rural landscape became a working-class neighbourhood: new rental buildings rose along the eastern edge, their architecture spare and functional. As early as 1915, municipal councillor Pierre Dunand was already calling in Le Carougeois for the street’s extension to attract “new industries” and bolster the commune’s revenues. This idea came to fruition only after 1950, when the street was lengthened to rue Baylon in the context of the redevelopment of La Praille. At no. 16, the Eugène Gras factory, specialised in the canning of cardoons, long illustrated the district’s blend of artisanal and industrial activity until it shut down in 1998.

Rue Vautier links rue Ancienne to rue de la Filature along an old route, a vestige of the access paths predating the city’s founding. Originally called rue Saint-Léger, in 1915 it was renamed after a Carouge family, whose members, Samuel, Moïse and Adolphe Vautier, combined an entrepreneurial spirit with civic engagement. Behind its understated façades lies a layered artisanal, political and social memory, shaped by the workshops, cafés and institutions that once enlivened this corner of old Carouge.

The street’s former name, rue Saint-Léger—documented from the nineteenth century—often caused confusion with the Geneva street bearing the same name. As early as 1907, several articles in Le Carougeois proposed renaming it to honour the Vautier family, “a Carouge family in which both father and son served as State Councillors.” The current name was officially adopted in 1915.

Among the street’s oldest buildings stands the “maison du comte de Veyrier,” erected in 1782 by Pierre-Claude de la Fléchère. The edifice recalls Carouge’s Sardinian roots: from 1787 onwards, its ground floor housed a synagogue, reflecting unprecedented religious openness for its time. Nearby, maison Jacquemard-Guinand (1781) similarly reflects the urban vision of King Victor-Amadeus III.

In the nineteenth century, Samuel Vautier set up a precision-tool factory here, which was later taken over by his son Moïse (1831–1899), an industrialist and statesman. A popular figure in Geneva’s radical circles who served several terms as President of the Council of State, Moïse Vautier also founded the Cercle du Léopard, a political and sporting social club. His son Adolphe, elected to the Council of State in 1909, continued this civic tradition.  

Opened in the 1960s, rue Antoine-Jolivet connects avenue de la Praille to route des Jeunes, skirting a former district of workshops and warehouses gradually drawn into the vast redevelopment of La Praille. It once bordered the railway marshalling yards, the epicentre of the transformation undertaken by the FIPA (Fondation des terrains industriels Praille-Acacias). In 1965, the Council of State named the street after Antoine Jolivet, a former mayor of Carouge whose integrity and steadfastness left a lasting mark on the city’s public life.

Born in 1871 in Presinge, Antoine Jolivet moved to Carouge as a young adult, pursuing a career in the postal administration, where his diligence and benevolence earned him the trust of fellow citizens. Elected as a Radical deputy to the Grand Council in 1913, he joined Carouge’s Administrative Council in 1922, serving as mayor almost continuously until 1942. Under his guidance, the commune modernised its infrastructure, consolidated its finances, and acquired several strategic plots of land in La Praille, anticipating its future development. A prudent administrator, he reshaped municipal management while remaining attentive to social needs. For example, during the war, he introduced aid for the families of mobilised soldiers and set up school canteens. In 1939, together with Claudius Dupanloup and Ernest Muller, he founded the Cartel des sociétés carougeoises, an umbrella association for revitalising local cultural and community life. When he passed away in 1950, Antoine Jolivet left the memory of a discreet yet influential servant of the commune.

Named in 1959, avenue Vibert honours a Carouge family distinguished by its political, artistic, and civic engagement. Laid out on former market-garden plots on the La Praille plain, the avenue lies at the heart of the Tours district—an emblem of modern Carouge— linking boulevard des Promenades to route des Jeunes. Poised between family memory and post-war urban planning, it reflects the city’s transition from a crafts-based town to a planned urban centre geared towards social housing and urban diversity.

The name conferred in 1959 honours several members of the same family. Pierre-Jean Vibert (1844–1926), a publicist and a member of Carouge’s Administrative Council, vigorously defended the town’s autonomy before its incorporation into Geneva. His son James-André Vibert (1872–1942), a sculptor trained under Rodin and a professor at the Geneva School of Fine Arts, created Le Serment du Grütli and the Monument des Communes réunies, both of which became part of the region’s civic memory. His brother, Pierre-Eugène (1875–1937), a painter and engraver, also taught at the School of Fine Arts, leaving behind a highly refined oeuvre. Two other family members, Félix-Jean and François Vibert, served the community as police commissioners and municipal councillors. Their name was given to a new thoroughfare at a time of profound change for Carouge. The Tours neighbourhood (1960–1963), built to address the post-war housing crisis, combined modernist architecture with social ambition. Avenue Vibert thus links the memory of a civic-minded dynasty to the spirit of forward-looking urban planning.

Abutting place de Sardaigne, parc Louis-Cottier offers a peaceful spot in the heart of old Carouge. Laid out on the former garden of maison Delafontaine, it has been named after a Carouge watchmaker and watercolourist since 1977. Louis Cottier (1894–1966) embodied precision craftsmanship, artistic curiosity, and civic-mindedness. The park honours a figure attached to his community, who combined technical invention, a poetic eye, and a strong sense of the common good.

A watchmaker by trade and the son of an inventor of automatons, Louis Cottier perpetuated in Carouge the tradition of the cabinotiers, the independent artisans of the Genevan Fabrique. In his workshop he developed the world-time watch, capable of displaying several time zones simultaneously—an innovation later adopted by leading brands like Rolex. An inventive craftsman, he also designed handless display watches and remarkably refined prototypes.

A self-taught painter, Cottier produced hundreds of watercolours of Carouge and its surrounding countryside, offering a luminous visual chronicle of the city in the twentieth century. In 1943, with Louis Uldry, he co-founded La Palette carougeoise, a circle for amateur artists. For sixteen years, as a municipal councillor and a member of the Christian-Social Independent Party, he worked to advance policies combining social justice and popular culture.

Rue Adolphe-Fontanel, running from rue Ancienne to rue Jacques-Dalphin, was opened in the 1870s to serve the new primary school. Breaking with the regular geometry of the Sardinian plan, its layout was shaped by sanitation and traffic flow concerns. The street illustrates the gradual modernisation of nineteenth-century Carouge. It honours Dr Adolphe Fontanel (1818–1879), a physician, political figure, and mayor of Carouge — a prominent voice of republican radicalism and of the hygienist reforms that helped shape present-day Carouge.

Born in Carouge to a family of Savoyard origin, Jean-Adolphe Fontanel studied medicine in Paris before opening a practice on rue Saint-Victor in 1846. A community physician, he promoted prevention, education, and public health in line with prevailing hygienist doctrines. His commitment extended beyond medicine: elected mayor five times between 1847 and 1875, he also served on the Grand Council and the Council of State, working alongside James Fazy for a republican, secular, and socially responsible state. Fontanel’s death in 1879 came shortly before the inauguration of the Jacques-Dalphin School, built according to his long-espoused principles: light, ventilation, hygiene, and access to education. The street that now bears his name thus preserves a twofold memory: that of a physician attentive to collective well-being, and that of a visionary mayor who embodied Carouge’s civic modernity in the nineteenth century.

Rue Louis-de-Montfalcon, opened in 1910 on the former site of the Bureau de la Gabelle, emerged alongside the urbanisation of northern Carouge and the construction of École des Pervenches. Its layout, shaped by the demolition of the customs building and the creation of a regular built frontage, illustrates the transition from the artisanal town of the nineteenth century to the residential Carouge of the twentieth. In 1925, the municipality opted to name the street after Louis de Montfalcon, the first Swiss mayor of Carouge, a figure who embodied the thread of continuity linking the Sardinian, French and Genevan administrations.

Born in 1759, Louis de Montfalcon came from a Savoyard family established in Compesières and ennobled under the Empire. A royal notary under the Sardinian regime, he became mayor of Carouge during the French occupation, remaining in office after the city’s incorporation into Geneva in 1816. A Geneva State Councillor from 1817 to 1831, he was one of the few Catholics to sit in a predominantly Protestant executive, embodying the desire for integration of the Communes réunies. His accidental death in 1831 ended a life anchored in public duty and steadfast loyalty to Carouge.

His son, Louis-Apollonie de Montfalcon (1807–1872), a doctor of law and a member of the Grand Council, extended this commitment as a member of the 1841 Constituent Assembly. By naming this street after him in 1925, Carouge affirmed its civic memory: that of a lineage linking the Sardinian town to the modern Genevan city, sustained by a spirit of openness and political continuity.

Avenue Cardinal-Mermillod links place de l’Octroi to rue de la Fontenette. Its layout, shaped by the major urban transformations of the 1950s, accompanied the modernisation of Carouge’s centre and the construction of new neighbourhoods. The name, officially adopted in 1965, honours Gaspard Mermillod (1824–1892), the first Genevan to be named cardinal. Born in Carouge into modest circumstances, Mermillod became a prominent figure of social Catholicism and interconfessional dialogue, embodying a spiritual and intellectual openness that was ahead of its time.

Born in rue Ancienne in 1824, Gaspard Mermillod grew up in the crafts-driven Carouge of the nineteenth century. Ordained as a priest in Fribourg in 1847, he soon gained recognition as a preacher and journalist, promoting Catholic education for the masses. Appointed Bishop of Hebron—an honorary title given to bishops without a diocese—and apostolic vicar of Geneva in 1864, he quickly became a symbol of Catholic revival in a canton still marked by the Reformation. His zeal led to his expulsion from Switzerland in 1873, at the height of the Kulturkampf. After fleeing to Rome, he remained there for nearly a decade before being appointed Bishop of Lausanne and Geneva in 1883, a sign of appeasement between Rome and the Swiss Confederation. Made a cardinal in 1890, he helped found the University of Fribourg and shape the Church’s emerging social doctrine. Following his death in Rome in 1892, his ashes were transferred to Carouge in 1926. Naming this avenue after him was a reminder that in Carouge, modernity could coexist with a spirit of harmony and the memory of the humble.

Rue Louis-Duparc, which has since disappeared, once linked rue Alexandre-Gavard to route de Saint-Julien, following an old La Praille path that crossed damp meadows and industrial wasteland. Named in 1958, it honoured Louis Duparc (1866–1932), a Carouge-born scientist specialising in geology and analytical chemistry who taught at the University of Geneva and wrote studies on platinum deposits in the Urals. Choosing his name for the street reflected a desire to acknowledge intellectual excellence and the city’s scientific influence.

Louis Duparc, born in Carouge into a bourgeois family close to the Republic of Geneva, was both a scholar and a public figure. After completing a doctorate in science, he pursued an active field career marked by the discovery and meticulous study of platinum ore deposits, all while teaching geology and analytical chemistry in Geneva. Elected to the Grand Council in 1898, he advocated for scientific education and the development of the region’s natural resources. Albeit short and unassuming, rue Louis-Duparc embodied the commune’s wish to honour its intellectual figures. Its disappearance in the 1960s, amid the industrial and railway transformations of La Praille, reflects the tension between scientific memory and functional urban changes.

Avenue Jean-Lachenal once wended its way across southern Carouge, linking the Promenades canal to the La Praille gardens in a semi-rural landscape of orchards and nineteenth-century plots. A private passageway, it was named after Jean Lachenal, who owned the adjoining land, providing access to the surrounding fields as per prevailing practices. Its origins remain uncertain, and it never appeared in official plans before disappearing from the urban map.

The passage mirrored the network of farming and private access paths on the fringes of the Rondeau and La Praille at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lined with walls or hedges, it formed part of residents’ daily lives, facilitating the operation of local market-gardening farms. It was removed in 1967 when the Promenades primary school was built. This establishment, inaugurated in 1969, represented rapid post-war urban growth and optimum use of available land. Avenue Jean-Lachenal thus illustrates the vulnerable nature of private pathways confronted by urban planning priorities. Although it has since vanished from the landscape, oral memory has preserved the traces of a rural passageway that once revealed the everyday practices and lifestyle of a bygone Carouge.

Once situated within the bend of rue de Lancy, near the present rue Louis-de-Montfalcon, parc Wolf has long since disappeared from the Carouge landscape. Sited at the former Bureau de la Gabelle (tax office), which was demolished in 1908, it was turned into a shaded public garden in the early twentieth century before giving way to social-housing projects in the 1950s. From its origins as a customs outpost to its later residential vocation, the site distils two centuries of change in southern Carouge, marked by the regulation of movement, urban modernisation, and the gradual disappearance of green spaces.

The story of parc Wolf begins with the Bureau de la Gabelle, a customs outpost erected in the late eighteenth century to collect entry duties between Geneva and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia. After Carouge was incorporated into the canton of Geneva in 1816, the building lost its function and passed into private hands. Its last known owner, a certain Mr. Wolf, lent his name to the adjoining garden, although it never became an official place name. In 1908, the commune purchased the plot and demolished the building, retaining part of the land for a small public park, enclosed by walls and shaded by trees. Mentioned in Le Carougeois in 1935 as one of the city’s few green spaces, parc Wolf embodied the hygienical and recreational ideals of the early twentieth century. However, the post-war housing crisis soon led the Municipal Housing Foundation, from 1955 onwards, to erect three rent-controlled buildings on the site. Completed in 1965, the works erased the park, leaving behind a mere name, preserved through oral memory, of a Carouge where gardens still formed part of everyday urban life.