The Clubs of Romandy, Switzerland

French-speaking Switzerland has numerous notable clubs.

The clubs of Switzerland (above) have their highest concentration in the French-speaking west.

Romandy - the French-speaking part of Switzerland, in the west - covers just four of the country’s 26 cantons, and accounts for some 22% of its population. Yet it also contains some of Europe’s earliest private members’ clubs. It is also where I am from, with several generations of my family having been members of two of the Lausanne clubs, so I have a personal interest in this slice of Clubland.

View of the Cercle de la Terrasse clubhouse from its eponymous terrace (Photo credit: Instagram account for mpcmusic.ch.)

The oldest establishment in Switzerland to be run continously as a social club is the Cercle de la Terrasse (Circle of the Terrace), a gentlemen’s club in Geneva dating to 1754. It began its life on Geneva’s Rue des Granges, inspired by English visitors on ‘Grand Tours’ - Switzerland was a popular stopping-off point for northern European visitors heading for Italy and Greece. The Club adopted its present name in 1862, after its second premises at Rue de l'Hôtel-de-Ville 8 which had a notable terrace. In 1910, it moved to its present building, the Edwardian-era Diodati-Eynard mansion on Geneva’s Rue Jean-Gabriel Eynard. The present mansion is a substantial clubhouse, and includes an elevated terrace with a view of the surrounding area.

The English bar of the Cercle de la Terrasse. (Photo credit: Circulo Ecuestre website.)

Switzerland’s second-oldest continuously-operating club is the Société du Jardin de Neuchâtel (Society of the Garden), dating to 1759. This is another gentlemen’s club, based in Neuchâtel, located in the Maison de Halles, the city’s Market Hall dating to 1569. Like the Cercle de la Terrasse, this was consciously modelled on the London clubs of the 18th century. However, recent decades have seen it evolve into a less aristocratic institution than was previously the case: Maurice de Tribolet, a retired cantonal archivist and club member, told Le Temps in 2013:

“Until 1848, all the notables of Neuchâtel were members. The membership criteria were extremely strict. Its composition has changed enormously since the 1980s with the arrival of representatives of the economy.”

Neuchâtel’s 16th century Maison de Halles (Market Hall), which has hosted the Société du Jardin de Neuchâtel since 1852. (Photo credit: https://estouteville.fr/)

Also worthy of mention is a Swiss club not in Romandy, but located not far away, and exactly the same age as the above: the Cercle de la Grande Société de Berne (Circle of the Grand Society of Berne). This is another gentlemen’s club, in the Swiss capital. This club drew its inspiration, not from the English clubs, but from the Grande Société of The Hague, which had been founded in 1748; its founder-members included a dozen Bernese officers who went on to co-found the Swiss club eleven years later. It was to prove influential on subsequent clubs of Romandy. The Club founded a shareholder company Hôtel de Musique in 1767, constructing the present clubhouse. Originally restricted to members from Berne, it is now open to men from across Switzerland, with 300 members.

The interior of the Cercle de la Grande Société de Berne. (Photo credit: Twitter account, @LionsBubenberg.)

After the flurry of Swiss clubs founded in the 1750s, there were relatively few new foundations for the remainder of the 18th century; and the onset of the French revolution, followed by the Napoleonic wars, largely froze the once-steady flow of visiting English aristocrats on Grand Tours. Switzerland itself was invaded by France in 1798, leading to the dissolution of both the old Confederation, and in 1803, the Helvetic Republic. Napoleon’s 1803 Act of Mediation had the effect of replacing it with a new Swiss Confederation, while the country remained under French occupation until 1813.

The Grand-Rue clubhouse of the Cercle de la Grande Société of Fribourg. (Photo credit: Wikimedia.)

Nevertheless, Switzerland did see some further club establishments during the Napoleonic wars. Several of the Swiss cantons in this era proved to be highly amenable to the creation of new clubs and societies, even giving them official endorsement. Examples included the Cercle de la Grande Société (Circle of the Grand Society) of Fribourg, founded in 1802. This was consciously modelled on the Club of the same name in Berne. It has occupied a clubhouse at Grand-Rue 68 since 1821, though until 1846 it depended on the more capacious mansion of General von der Weid at number 14, for the regular balls for which the Club was noted. A large-scale rebuild was undertaken in 1850-1, to the plans of architect Johann-Jakob, and it is this building which remains to this day, having undergone a major restoration in 2001.

The dining room of the Gesellschaft Herren zu Schützen. (Photo credit: Gesellschaft Herren zu Schützen website.)

There was also another Napoleonic-era club founded well outside of Romandy - the Gesellschaft Herren zu Schützen (Gentlemen’s Society of Riflemen) in Lucerne had operated as an archery society since 1451, but evolved into a gentlemen’s club with club premises in 1807, completing its clubhouse four years later.

The clubhouse of l’Abbaye de l’arc of Lausanne, seen from its grounds where archery is still practised. (Photo credit: Société Académique Vaudoise.)

Following this evolutionary model was the Abbaye de l’arc (Abbey of Archery) in Lausanne. This had operated since 1691 as an archery society on the city’s Montbenon esplanade; but it reconstituted itself as a club in 1812, building its present Henri Perregaux-designed clubhouse integrating Tuscan columns, which opened in 1814, the year of Napoleon’s first downfall. The building underwent further extensions in 1836, 1866 and 1871. Today the clubhouse also hosts the Société Académique Vaudoise, the main alumni society of the University of Lausanne.

Members outside the Abbaye de l’arc clubhouse in the 1950s. My great-grandfather Dr Edmond Thévoz is stood at the far end of the table, looking at his wristwatch. (Photo credit: Veronique Thévoz, from family album.)

As I have written elsewhere, the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars brought a flurry of club foundations around Europe, as trade, travel, and indeed Grand Tours all resumed after more than 25 years of dislocation. Switzerland was at the heart of this process, and the clubs formed during this time tended to have a strong literary flavour, as well as being highly diplomatic- and travel-oriented, often welcoming English members on lengthy stopovers, drawn to the shores of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva).

In Fribourg, there was the Cercle littéraire et de commerce (Literary and Commercial Circle) founded in 1816. This still meets above the cafe-restaurant Le Jura, which is owned by the Circle - a common business model among clubs in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Switzerland, of the Club operating a public restaurant on the ground floor, but maintaining private rooms above, with an emphasis on literary facilities for members.

Clubhouse of the Cercle du Marché of Vevey, pictured in 1995. (Photo credit: Alain Rivier et al, Cercle du Marché, Vevey, 1818 (Vevey, 1995), p. 41.)

In the market town of Vevey, the Cercle du Marché (Market Circle) was launched in 1818. Founded by 71 local businessmen, it again followed the model of meeting in rooms above shops or a restaurant, appropriately over the main market square. More aristocratic than its 1810s literary contemporaries, it remains extremely small - a 1995 history of the club listed fewer than 400 members across the whole of its first 177 years, with the membership tightly focused around a few local families.

Clubhouse of the Société de Lecture in Geneva. (Photo credit: Wikimedia Foundation.)

More explicitly literary in theme is the Société de Lecture (Reading Society) of Geneva, also founded in 1818. It was the initiative of the botanist Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle, who was struck by the poverty of the Geneva public library, and wished to create a club for the city’s writers and scholars, with ready access to scientific journals as well as books and pamphlets. Occupying a capacious 18th century building on a quiet yard off Grand Rue, the Club and its salons are centred around a library of over 200,000 volumes, and its former members include Franz Liszt and Vladimir Lenin - the latter during his years of exile in Switzerland.

The Cercle Littéraire of Lausanne combines both salon clubrooms with an extensive library. (Photo credit: Le Temps.)

Very similar in aims and scope is the Cercle Littéraire (Literary Circle) of Lausanne, established the following year in 1819. Its 114 founder-members consciously modelled the Club on the Société de Lecture of Geneva, and acquired its present building on the Place Saint-François in 1821. Lausanne already had a variety of literary societies that had developed in the 18th century, but the Cercle Littéraire aimed to consolidate these around a library (now stocking 70,000 volumes) as well as salons. The Club today has some 600 members, who are elected in batches twice a year, still using an 1860s ballot box. Gone are the billiard tables, the rooms now used for lectures and seminars.

Switzerland’s historic clubs have a noticeably masculine culture, even by comparison with their European counterparts - as the preponderance of “gentlemen’s clubs” above suggests, many of these clubs remain men-only to this day. Those which do admit women have done so on dates varying from 1953 for the Société de Lecture of Geneva, to 1993 for the Cercle Littéraire of Lausanne. By way of context, women did not get the vote in Swiss federal elections until 1971; and this did not apply to all cantons until 1990. Romandy was always regarded as the more liberal part of Switzerland; and three of the four cantons of Romandy - Vaud, Neuchâtel and Geneva - were the first three Swiss cantons to grant female suffrage at the cantonal level, in 1959-60.

Romandy is an unusual, idiosyncratic cultural interchange. It is not “typical” of Switzerland (if such a thing is possible), and that is not merely down to the language. It is more Catholic. It tends to be relatively more liberal. And despite Switzerland’s secluded image, it has long been an interchange of Europe, culturally as well as economically. In the 18th century, the Swiss were among early pioneers of club culture, but the aftermath of the Napoleonic occupation saw a flourishing of Swiss club culture, and much of that remains today.