Cimetière des Rois (Cimetière de Plainpalais)

About this audio guide

This guide to the Cimetiere des Rois in Geneva follows a photograph that made world news: an elderly man appearing to desecrate the headstone of Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentine writer buried here since 1986 under a yew tree near John Calvin's own unmarked grave. It traces why Borges chose Geneva as his resting place, and how, twenty-five years later, a Chilean writer named Eduardo Labarca, still angry over Borges's handshake with Pinochet, staged a scene at the same grave to sell a book. Look for the yew tree marking Borges's plot, a few steps from Calvin's unmarked ground.