From the Garden to the Alpine Village

One of the most interesting features of the historical series of artificial mountains and their successive meanings is the interplay of echoes, the reception of older forms that are constantly reborn in new realizations. Thus the second Swiss national exhibition of 1896, in Geneva, theater, inter alia, of a Swiss village and a “negro village,” admired by contemporaries—with, needless to say, a very imposing mountain built from scratch—takes up and goes beyond the ephemeral or perennial mounds we encountered along the way.1 Indeed, the Geneva event skillfully amplified the topical elements of major national, universal or electric exhibitions, providing, with its tinkered and assembled large scale mountain on a site extending from the Plainpalais Plain to the river Arve, a setting and a spectacular landscape for the entire exhibition. At the end of the 19th century, the entertainment society was no longer satisfied with just a grandiose natural setting for visitors, but offered a complete alpine landscape ready to be admired. In order to make the machine of scenography run, it was necessary to add to the structure set up the authenticity of an alpine garden, the global visibility suggested by a “Panorama of the Alps,” but also the plausibility ensured by the presence of the fauna, not to mention that of the “human fauna”: the 350 representatives of Switzerland in flesh and blood in traditional costume.

Conceived and realized in the heyday of the exhibition movement, the Helvetic event puts two fundamentally opposed realities side by side: on one hand, there were most modern machines occupying large halls, an expression of the cutting-edge technology of the time, in particular electrotechnical devices, and the usual variety of encyclopedic pavilions dedicated to the advancement of industry, agriculture, science, and the fine arts. On the other hand, the Swiss village exhibited the picturesque charm and authenticity of an entire country, an image conveyed through the miniaturization of the natural and anthropized territory, with a fake mountain 40 meters high and almost 600 meters long as its main symbol. Surrounded by heavy palisades which had to defend the festive space from the possible attack of unemployed people, this landscaped perimeter made it possible to discover three farms, 56 large houses (chalets), 18 smaller ones (mazots) and a church, within a “nature” represented by a 20m waterfall, a stream and a small lake.