Photo : Agence Hemelka / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
Téléphérique du Salève
The Salève cable car links the hamlet of Pas de l'Échelle, in the commune of Étrembières, to the crest of the Grand Salève, above the Geneva plain. Inaugurated in 1932, it is the fruit of a project by the entrepreneur Auguste Fournier, carried out with the Geneva architect Maurice Braillard and several engineers. It was conceived as an ambitious technical achievement for its time.
The massif had already known, before it, an electric rack railway. The stations have recently been rehabilitated, which modernised the installations while preserving their heritage character.
The ride takes only a few minutes and opens onto wide views towards Geneva, Lake Geneva and, in clear weather, the Mont Blanc range. At the top, walking paths let you tour the crest and the pastures. The oldest route of the massif, that of the Pas de l'Échelle, reaches the upper station by an old path with steps cut in the stone.
