Geneva is the European hub of diplomatic and fiscal affairs, with many global organisations positioning their operative headquarters within its cosmopolitan centre. Although only Switzerland's third largest city, after capital Bern and Zurich, Geneva is considered by many to be the operative heart of Continental Europe. The UN, Red Cross and many other multinational organisations are based there.

Geneva boasts a rich social and economic history with written records dating its civic existence back to the conquests of the early Roman Empire, but its tribal heritage has been shown to date back even further, to 3000 BC. Indeed, rudimentary dwellings have been excavated from beside Geneva's lifeblood - Lake Geneva.

Lake Geneva, or Lac Leman in French, is Central Europe's second largest freshwater lake, after Hungary's Lake Balaton, and covers an area of 225 square miles. Forged by the receding Rhone Glacier, Lake Geneva receives the headwaters of the Rhone River, which flows into Lac Leman on its South east shore, between the municipality of Villeneuve and the town of St Gingolph, before the Rhone continues its journey towards the Mediterranean, leaving from the south west of the Lake.

Owing to the sheer size of Lake Geneva, jurisdiction is shared by the two countries it straddles, with Switzerland owning 60 per cent and France the remaining 40, which lies across the country's Savoy Alps in the western Haute-Savoie region.

In 1827, its size meant that French mathematician Jacques Charles Francois Sturm and Swiss physicist Daniel Collodon could become the first scientists to measure the speed of sound in fresh water on it.

The lake went on to make further history too. Painted by British artist J.M.W. Turner in 1810, Lake Geneva also served as the site for Mary Shelley's infamous 1816 summer holiday, which took place at Lord Byron's lakeside Villa Diodati and during which her most famous work, Frankenstein, took shape.

The lake's crescent shoreline borders three Swiss cantons - Geneva, Vaud and Valais - providing each with lakeside landing spots, popular with tourists and locals alike. The lake provides a number of opportunities for water sports, including boating, waterskiing, bathing and wind surfing.

The lake hasn't always been suitable for bathing, however. Lac Leman was plagued during the 1960s and again in the 80s by disastrous levels of harmful pollution, which reduced both its underwater visibility and fish stocks to practically nil.

More recently, however, water sports have returned to Lake Geneva, which provides for a flourishing tourism trade. Furthermore, the lake has been given a modern treatment in the form of its spectacular Jet d'Eau, which spouts 500 litres of water every second to a height of 140 metres in a style echoed in the design of Olafur Eliasson's The New York City Waterfalls. The Jet d'Eau can be seen from an altitude of 10,000 ft, with many flights to Geneva soaring over the water spout when approaching or departing Geneva airport.

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