Paulo Coelho to open museum in Geneva in September
Brazilian author Paulo Coelho is to open a museum in Geneva next September. The author of The Alchimist has lived in the city at the end of the lake with his wife, the painter Christina Oiticica, for over fifteen years.
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Coelho, considered to be one of the world’s most translated authors, will open the museum a stone’s throw from the historic Russian Orthodox church in Geneva. The museum will be home to the typewriter on which he typed the draft of The Alchemist (1988) according to the Paulo Coelho Foundation website.
The Museum will tell the story of his stay in a psychiatric hospital from the age of 17 to 20 and his involvement in the hippy movement in the 1960s, before travelling to South America and Europe. In the 70s, he was briefly imprisoned and tortured under the Brazilian dictatorship.
His spiritual questioning led him to the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, where he found the inspiration for his first novel The Pilgrimage (1987).
His wife Christina Oiticica will be exhibiting her works on the top floor of the museum, which has three galleries. They were married in Geneva. The couple also live in Tarbes, in south-west France.
As well as being one of the best-selling authors in the world, with some twenty books to his name, Paulo Coelho also has a huge following on social networks, with millions of followers, including 30 million on Facebook.
In 2021, the Swiss magazine Bilan estimated his fortune at between CHF500-600 million ($608-729 million).
Translated from French by DeepL/jdp
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