Les Grottes

About this audio guide

This guide to the Les Grottes neighborhood in Geneva follows Rue des Gares, once the city's poorest street, filled with the immigrant Spanish laborers, Galicians and Andalusians who worked the bistros and lodging houses through the small hours. It traces how the city later decided the whole quarter was an embarrassment, drawing up an American-style plan of towers and wide avenues, and the fight residents and squatters waged against the wrecking crews through the 1970s. Bistros once lined nearly every building on the street, open until three or four in the morning.