A new public beach officially opened in Geneva on Saturday. The specially built Eaux-Vives beach on Lake Geneva, which has views of the Jet d’Eau fountain, has been over ten years in the making.
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The free 400-metre-long Eaux-Vives beach, near the La Grange Park and the Genève Plage complex, will be able to welcome 8,000 people a day when it is fully open. Strict rules ban music, barbecues, dogs, bicycles and roller blades at the site.
The project to build a new beach has been years in the making. It was initiated in 2008 by the Green parliamentarian Robert Cramer but was delayed in 2013 after a successful appeal by the environmental group WWF against the size of the embankments planned in order to build the beach. An amended project with smaller embankments, estimated at a total cost of CHF67 million ($68 million), finally went ahead.
Work on the stony beach, lawns and nearby reed marsh has taken two years, but is not fully complete. Construction work is also continuing to extend the neighbouring port. The Eaux-Vives beach will close on September 29 and will be fully operational next summer.
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Taking a dip in outdoor pools has a tradition in Switzerland going back 200 years. It's a custom that begins anew every May.
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