What child hasn’t dreamed of setting off to explore so many distant lands with such evocative names in front of his or her Atlas. The fastidious geographer, lover of beautiful, realistic and precise maps, may not find what he’s looking for here. Ptolemy, Mercator, longitudes and latitudes, parallels and meridians are not our domain, but the history of a place is fortunately also mapped by the imagination, by its anecdotes and stories, more or less fabulous. But above all, it constantly opens up new territories to be discovered, as each of us is keen to map out our own desires and needs.

The exhibition, which required the exhumation of largely unpublished maps, extravagantly reveals a few facets of an unsuspected Lake Geneva.