Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The upper station of the cable car of the Salève, inaugurated in 1932, is the work of the Swiss architect Maurice Braillard and the telepherist André Rebuffel, gathered by the entrepreneur Auguste Fournier. This project is part of a dynamic of Alpine tourism development, combining modern transport and the search for exceptional panoramas. Unlike an earlier project by engineer Maurice Delessert (1910), which provided for a departure from Switzerland, this cable car is entirely located in France, on the territory of Monnetier-Mornex, in Haute-Savoie.

The cable car replaces the Salève railway (1892–1935), a rack line linking Veyrier (Switzerland) and Thirteen Trees, near the current high station. It was upgraded in 1951 and closed in 1975 due to a decline in attendance and deterioration. Thanks to the intervention of the canton of Geneva and Edmond de Rothschild, he reopened in 1984 after extensive work by Von Roll. Since 2007, it has been managed by a cross-border grouping including Geneva, Annemasse and Monnetier-Mornex.

The high station, classified as Historic Monument in 2018 (excluding post-1932 parts), underwent a major renovation between 2021 and 2023. This project restored its original architecture, including the creation of a 360° panoramic restaurant in the upper part of the building, as Braillard had originally imagined. The cable car, operated since 2013 by a consortium including RATP Dev and Poma, reopened in September 2023.

As early as the 1930s, the station housed a restaurant, the theatre of an episode marking January 1934: a storm blocked 32 people for one night, the road of Thirteen Trees becoming impassable. The site, a symbol of Franco-Swiss cooperation, also embodies the evolution of alpine leisure, combining industrial heritage, modern architecture and cross-border issues.

The Salève cable car is part of a series of similar infrastructures built in the French Alps during the inter-war period, such as those of the Brévent (Chamonix) or Mont-Veyrier. Its history reflects the technical, economic and political challenges of mountain tourism, between innovation and heritage preservation.

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