Leigh had already finished most of her conference related duties at this point, so in the afternoon she played hooky and we went to look at a bit more of Geneva together.

We had been told that Geneva was not the most interesting city in Switzerland, and (spoilers) it’s not, really.  But there’s a few really good things worth seeing, and one of those is the archaeological museum under the cathedral.

The cathedral, viewed from the outside, is a proper European pile of stone – towers, arches, all that fun stuff.

But directly underneath is a huge excavation site – an area substantially larger than the church itself has been opened up to show construction going all the way back to the Roman era.  It’s remarkable how MUCH empty space there is, given the fact that there is still an entire CATHEDRAL sitting on top of it.

And there’s some really impressive stuff – the monks apparently had heated floors in their cells at one point.  WE don’t have that, and we live in the future!

This mosaic was the floor of the bishop’s reception chamber.  You can see spots where it was incompetently repaired much later than its original construction.  Good to know Ecce Homo wasn’t purely a recent phenomenon.

Having explored the depths below, it was time for the sky above, in the form of climbing the church tower for a view of the city.  Unfortunately, this was the one day of our visit where the weather was grey and rainy.

And just for completeness, here’s a view of the church from the inside.

Swiss cathedrals are interesting, because they were generally built before the Reformation, meaning they were highly decorated and ornate, but then stripped down to the extent possible afterwards.  So it’s obvious that there used to be a lot more stuff here.

Except for this chapel – this one’s still bonkers.

After this, we visited a small gallery we had seen an ad for on a bus.  It’s dedicated to artwork that revolves around clockwork and time.  Some really amazing pieces, NONE of which we remembered to photograph, although Leigh at least got a video of a marble clock.

They had a “build your own Swiss mechanical clock” kit that I really wanted, if it hadn’t been somewhere north of $10,000.

After that we just bonked around the city a bit more, had some more chocolate, and then went back to our hotel to hide from the rain.