Getting to Plainpalais
Plainpalais, the artistic heart of Geneva
Plainpalais is a district where the living environment is fully animated. It is a dynamic district full of restaurants, bars, cafes and shops of all kinds. Culture is at the center of this district which has a large number of theaters and cultural venues.
You can easily get to Plainpalais by bus. Discover all the information you need to organize your getaway with ease.
Plainpalais, a cultural district with an industrial past
Throughout its history, Plainpalais and La Jonction have housed many industrial buildings. Several of them have been transformed into performance or concert halls, artists' studios or even discotheques.
At La Coulouvrenière, the alternative cultural center of the Usine faces the Bâtiment des Forces Motrices (BFM), which mainly offers classical music.
A little history
Officially constituted in 1800 under French rule, the municipality of Plainpalais was attached to that of Geneva in 1930.
At first very rural and above all occupied by market garden land where the famous silver cardoons mainly grew, brought back from the Drôme and Cévennes regions by the French Huguenots, this vast territory extending in a triangle formed between the bed of the Rhône and that of the Arve was then heavily industrialized. The factories could draw there the driving force of the hydraulic current of these two rivers.
