I COULDN’T HAVE CHOSEN a worse day to visit Switzerland’s acclaimed International Museum of the Reformation. It was Geneva’s colourful holiday, Escalade. The entire citizenry turns out costumed, while muskets and cannons are fired continually to commemorate the repelling of the Duke of Savoy by the Genevese. Our cab encountered numerous roadblocks. In desperation I had to climb what the guidebook describes as “the seemingly endless flight of stairs from Bourg-de-Four or the steep ascent up the narrow Rue des Barrieres from the low town.” Was it worth it? Yes.

Geneva has long honoured the Protestant movement with its famous 325-foot long Reformation Wall. Fifteen-foot statues of Guillaume Farel, John Calvin, Theodore de Beze and John Knox peer out on the onlookers. But it wasn’t until 2005 that an actual museum was opened to tell their story. It’s situated in the 18th century mansion of wealthy banker Gedeon Mallet, built on the cloister grounds of St. Peter’s Cathedral where, in 1536, the Geneva citizens formally voted to follow the Reformation. The Museum is imaginatively conceived, furnishing a thorough and sometimes sombre look at the great reformer Calvin, his associates and opponents. There’s also a section tracing the development of Protestantism to today. With dedicated museum director Pastor Isabelle Graessle as my guide, I journeyed back in time to the turbulence, ecstasy and excesses of a spiritual revolution.

Room Two is devoted to the Bible, emphasizing the reformers’ insistence on “The Bible Alone.” There’s a 1565 New Testament belonging to Calvin’s great friend de Beze, which bears his erudite handwritten annotations. (De Beze was appointed Rector of Calvin’s Academy in 1559 and carried on Calvin’s work until 1570.) Other early Bibles include translations by Luther, Zwingli and Olivetan and the Geneva Bible translated by John Knox and his companions in exile, published here in 1560. The walls are hung with paintings and engravings of Bible stories. Other treasures are an early printing press and an authentic autograph of Luther.

Room Three offers vivid samples of the polemics that went on between Roman Catholic and Reform sides. Caricatures and other original drawings are satirical, humorous and sometimes quite vicious. They concretize the hostilities of that period. Room Four is called The Grand Salon, and indeed it is. It exemplifies the extravagance of this former mansion. This room is devoted to detailing the history of the Reformation. Visitors sit at individual stations watching a 15-minute audiovisual of the movement’s major figures: John Huss, Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer, Philip Melanchthon, Heinrich Bullinger, Farel (who induced Calvin to come to Geneva), Pierre Viret and de Beze.

Room Five houses a collection of rare books and prints, donated by a collector. Many of the conflicts of the period--including the horrific St. Bartholomew Day Massacre (1572)--waged by both Catholics and Protestants are graphically depicted here. Room Six deals with the Geneva of Calvin’s time, a city which couldn’t expand beyond its walls but had to build upward (that explains all the stairs I climbed!) A first edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is a jewel in the collection here. All the factors around Calvin’s banishment in 1538 from Geneva and his return in 1541 are detailed.

The museum Director was excited to show me their latest acquisition--an authentic letter written and signed by Calvin in 1545. “It was stolen from the Geneva Archives in the mid-19th century and reappeared in 2003. The family of the man who bought it offered it for auction and some generous patrons successfully bid on it this year and donated it,” she told us. She described the contents, which reveal a caring and pastoral side to Calvin reassuring a man who tried to commit suicide and was unsuccessful, that although what he attempted was wrong, the grace of God will not punish him.

In an adjoining music room, visitors can sit on a pew to “catch their breath” and press buttons to hear sung a marvellous collection of old and modern Psalters.

The stern face of Calvinism found some relief in Geneva’s marvellous cuisine. Frivolity may be out, but food was ok. Thus, one of the most impressive exhibits here is set in the Theological Banquet (Room 8). John Calvin presides over a large dining room where ten guests exchange heated views on the thorny issue of predestination. Visitors listen via audio guides. Fittingly, the last  “guest” to show up is Rousseau offering his naturalistic version of religion: “The pastors of Geneva are a strange breed…I believe that a just heart is the only fitting temple of the divine.”

Rooms Nine to Eleven include the flight of 800,000 French Huguenots after the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes and their subsequent dispersal across Europe. Geneva prospered from the expertise in arts, crafts and commerce of these Calvinist French Protestants as well as from their intellectual and spiritual life. An art gallery includes one painting of Calvin on his deathbed by Hornung, and Anker’s portrait of Calvin. The last room on this floor is described as “romantic” because of its 19thcentury representation of the past. Paintings depict the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in America, genre scenes of village life painted for Napoleon’s Josephine, and scenes recording the emerging evangelization of other countries by missionaries.

Basement exhibits continue exploring this world-wide preaching of the Word. The contributions of Rudolph Bultmann, Paul Tillich, William and Catherine Booth and the formation of the World Council of Churches are among those documented. An underground passage connects to the archeaeological site under St. Peter’s Cathedral. The Museum of the Reformation won the 2007 Council of Europe Museum Award and it’s clear why. In retracing the history of the Reformation in a clear and precise manner, intertwined oftimes with a lyrical touch, we come much closer to understanding the forces at work during the turbulent times of the Reformation. We also get an impressive lesson on the cultural, commercial and social development of Switzerland’s great international city, the Canton of Geneva.

As I left the city, I noticed numerous posters welcoming the 40,000 young adults who would be coming to Geneva for the last week of December to an international Taize gathering. And I wondered: What would the figures of those turbulent Reformation times think about such an ecumenical event? Perhaps, after all, Geneva is indeed the most appropriate setting.”