34geneva-blog

[34geneva-blog]

If, on freezing or windy days

If, on freezing or windy days, you go in search of the source of this world famous and much copied fountain opened here in 1951, and a symbol of the Swiss city ever since all you will find is a plain 4-inch (10cm) diameter nozzle. No bronze sea gods, no copper mermaids. But if the wind drops or the thermometer rises, it’s time to run as that innocuous nozzle sends seven tons of water shooting 460 ft (140m) into the Alpine sky at 120mph (200kph). Fed with millions of air bubbles, the water gleams snow white, sparkling with rainbows when the sun shines through its sky-reaching plume. Sometimes, the simplest things really are the best. (Credit: Guy Croft / Alamy Stock Photo) (Alt image/night – Credit: Andriy Kravchenko / Alamy Stock Photo)

Stravinsky Fountain, Paris

Set between the Flamboyant Gothic 16th-Century church of Saint-Merri and what the playful French sculptor Jean Tinguely described as the “superb monstrosity” of the Pompidou Centre, the Stravinsky Fountain must surely make even the most high-minded art historian smile. One of seven new Parisian fountains commissioned by presidential decree in 1978, Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle’s colourful kinetic fountain evokes themes in the works of the Russian-born composer Igor Stravinsky. For Stravinsky and his contemporaries, the circus was a popular theme and this charmingly surreal fountain is suitably clown-like. When it opened in 1983, above Pierre Boulez’s underground music research centre, Le Monde thought it had “the character of a mechanical music box of the 18th Century”. (Credit: Alamy)

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