Marble restoration in Geneva’s Old Town

On the hill surrounding St Peter’s Cathedral, the Old Town holds a precious share of Geneva’s architectural heritage: old houses reworked many times over, eighteenth-century mansions lining the Rue des Granges, buildings on the Grand-Rue where art galleries and antique dealers follow one another, and apartments clustered around the Place du Bourg-de-Four. Behind these stone façades, marble often plays a ceremonial role: carved fireplaces in the drawing rooms, chequerboard floors in the entrance halls, chest and console tops, and sometimes a more recently refitted bathroom in pale marble.

Les Traitements du Sud · Geneva approaches these interiors with a restorer’s eye. Every piece is assessed before it is treated, with one clear aim: to restore the marble’s original character — its veining, its depth, its polish — without erasing the patina that gives an old residence its charm. An entrance-hall floor walked on for generations is not handled like the floor of a new apartment: grinding is kept to a measured minimum, the level of shine is chosen to suit the period, and the stone is protected without being sealed in.

In the district we work for private owners, for the property managers and condominium associations (PPE) that run the buildings, for the galleries and shops on the Grand-Rue and for the practices based on the principal floors. All our services — polishing, crystallization, repair, stain removal and sealing — are carried out with compact equipment designed for narrow stairwells and small rooms.

Working on the hill means dealing with a dense, historic urban fabric. The lanes around the cathedral and the Bourg-de-Four are ill-suited to parking a van, so we favour lightweight equipment that can be carried by hand, and use nearby public car parks, such as Saint-Antoine, to keep congestion down. Deliveries are grouped at the start of the day.