Bill Harby Officially named Cimetière Plainpalais (Plainpalais Cemetery), this has long been known as the Cimetière des Rois not because any kings are buried here, but because it borders the Rue des Rois. Instead of royalty, this lovely little burial park in Geneva's Jonction quarter is the final home of numerous Swiss and international luminaries, which is why it's also called the Panthéon Genevois (Geneva Pantheon).
The cemetery's original inhabitants had been patients at the city's adjacent Plague Hospital. Today those unfortunates and the hospital are long gone, and it's hard to imagine what a grim place it must have been.
Now, it's a verdant little park (2.8 hectares), not a grid of manicured graves, but large grassy areas criss-crossed by white gravel walkways shaded by shrubs and trees. The landscapers let the grass grow longer than you might expect, and they resist over-pruning the shrubs. Benches offer comfortable places to sit and contemplate. One provocative bench is bookended and covered by two vertical question marks. Recently, a mother and her toddler sat there munching pretzels. She brings her boy here every week because 'it's calm, the trees are beautiful, the benches are comfortable, and there's no dog poop,' she said in French. They live ten minutes away.
The cemetery feels like a rural park – a park that's beautiful above ground, and fertile beneath with its many great minds and hearts.
City councillor William Favre and neighbours Bill Harby
Probably the most widely known person entombed here is a Father of the Protestant Reformation, John Calvin (1509-1564). However, exactly where he's buried on these grounds is a secret because he feared that his burial plot would draw unwelcome attention from zealots who came to venerate him and others, maybe carrying shovels, who had less-loving intentions. Nevertheless, in 1999, against the wishes of many, a local politician pushed through the creation of a suitably humble plot marked with a plaque. Is Calvin actually buried here? No one knows, supposedly.
Perhaps the puritanical theologian is even buried near Switzerland's most famous sex worker, Grisélidis Réal (1929-2005). As a firebrand speaker and author, and proud prostitute, Réal was an eloquent defender of her colleagues and of women's rights. Her grave's striking headstone is a grey polished stone disc about a metre tall subtly carved with the unmistakable lines of a navel and what lies just below.
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