Canton of Geneva, Switzerland

The Mandement is the canton's wine country: the slopes on the right bank of the Rhône west of the city, around the villages of Satigny, Russin and Dardagny. Geneva is Switzerland's third-largest wine canton after Valais and Vaud, with about 1,400 hectares of vines, and Satigny is the country's largest wine-growing commune. The white grape is Chasselas; the reds are Gamay, Pinot Noir, and Gamaret and Garanoir, two red crosses bred in Switzerland. Marked paths run through the vines from village to village.

The Allondon comes down from the Jura through the Pays de Gex in France and joins the Rhône near Russin, and its valley between Dardagny and Russin is a protected nature area of woodland and open river banks. Paths follow the water from the Mandement villages, so a walk through the vineyards can end on the river.

South of the Rhône, opposite the Mandement, the Champagne is a plain of cereal fields, farms and small villages such as Avully, Avusy, Laconnex and Soral. At its western end, Chancy is Switzerland's westernmost village, and there the Rhône leaves the country for France.

North of the city, past the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques on the lakeshore below the Palais des Nations, the right bank runs through Pregny-Chambésy, where many of the permanent missions to the United Nations stand, and on through Bellevue and Genthod to Versoix, the canton's last town before Vaud. Trains on the lakeshore line towards Coppet stop at the villages along the way.

Cologny rises from the left-bank shore just east of the city, a commune of villas on a slope that looks across the water to the city and the Jet d'eau. In the summer of 1816 Lord Byron rented the Villa Diodati here, with Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin — later Mary Shelley — and her stepsister Claire Clairmont in a house just below. A ghost-story contest among them and Byron's physician, John Polidori, gave Mary the idea for “Frankenstein”, published in 1818, and Polidori the tale he published in 1819 as “The Vampyre”. The villa is a private house and not open to visitors.

Also in Cologny, the Fondation Martin Bodmer shows the library of the collector Martin Bodmer, more than 150,000 items gathered around his idea of world literature, in a museum designed by Mario Botta and set largely below ground. Its treasures include a Gutenberg Bible and the Bodmer Papyri, among them an early copy of the Gospel of John.

Beyond Cologny, the left-bank shore runs north-east through Collonge-Bellerive, Corsier and Anières, past villas, vineyards and small harbours, to Hermance, the last Swiss village before the French border, some 15 kilometres from the city. Hermance is a medieval village of narrow lanes running down to the lake, and city buses reach it along the shore road.

The Salève, the long limestone mountain that closes Geneva's view to the south, lies entirely in France, in Haute-Savoie, but its cliffs face the canton directly across the border at Veyrier, and its highest point, the Grand Piton, reaches 1,379 metres. From the top of the cable car, at about 1,100 metres, the view takes in the canton, the lake, the Jura opposite and, on clear days, the Mont Blanc massif to the south-east. Paths run along the ridge, paragliders launch from its slopes, and its cliffs gave French its word for rock climbing, varappe, after one of their gullies.

The Léman Express, the cross-border rail network around Geneva, runs from Cornavin to Annemasse and on into Haute-Savoie, and it puts the French side of the region within a day trip. Annecy, an old town of canals on its own lake below the mountains, and Évian-les-Bains, the spa town on the French shore of Lake Geneva, are reached directly. From Saint-Gervais-les-Bains-Le Fayet, at the foot of the Mont Blanc massif, trains continue up the Arve valley to Chamonix.