Turn of the counts de Genève

The turn of the counts de Genève is located on the commune of the Roche-sur-Foron (Haute-Savoie). It is one of the last vestiges of the fortress of this dynasty of the counts de Genève. This tower, built between 1258 and 1268, was in fact the keep of the fortersse. It is about the one of the circular first towers built in Savoy on the architectural model that the count Pierre II of Savoy (1263-1268) paid in his country after a long stay in England where he had great interests: while crossing France, at the time of its voyages between Savoy and England, Pierre II was surely marked by the round towers designed by the engineers of king de France Philippe the Beautiful one. This new architecture constituted an important progress then because it removed the dead angles. Very good examples of this type of military architecture exist in Savoy, in particular with the Château of Thorens, a few kilometers of the Roche-sur-Foron.

The tower of the counts de Genève is built with horse on the natural fault of a very imposing rock. This erratic block transported by the glacier of Mont Blanc was posed approximately 10.000 years ago, at the time of the cast iron of the ices. This fault was walled outside by the builder of the keep; those subdivided it with interior thus forming four superimposed natural cellars. Above the rock, the keep itself consisted of three stages.

Since the end of the XIXe century, following work of the monks capuchins of the Rock (owners of the tower at that time), one crosses the rock right through: one can thus believe that there are two rocks whereas it is indeed same.

During the war which opposed the duke from Savoy on the one hand to Geneva and to king de France on the other hand, between 1589 and 1593, the fortified town that constituted Rock was besieged and devastated by the enemies of Savoy. It is indeed during the night of March 29th, 1590, during the intrusion of the Genevese with the Rock, which was destroyed the fortersse: there remain about it only some sections of wall like this impressive keep, perched on this erratic block of 17m. of height; the tower measures nothing any more but 11m. of top on the score of meters which it probably measured in the beginning.

the Roche-sur-Foron owes its name with this as a basis rock being used monumental for the tower known as " counts de Genève". " Foron" , was not added to " Roche" that at the time of the Annexation of Savoy in France (1860), against the opinion of Rochois! It is only in 1960, one century later, that the name " Rock-on-Foron" was actually officialized.

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