Lake Geneva Museum, History museum in Nyon, Switzerland

The Lake Geneva Museum (Musée du Léman) is a multidisciplinary museum in Nyon, Switzerland, facing the marina. Its 1,000 m² of permanent and temporary exhibitions include an aquarium room with about 18 fish species from Lake Geneva and its tributaries, a room on boatmen's confraternities, a space on the Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le lac Léman (CGN), and an area on the Piccard family's inventions.

The museum was founded in 1954 by Edgar Pelichet, notary and curator of Nyon Castle and the Ariana Museum in Geneva, to preserve the lake's natural, cultural and human heritage. It holds the collections of Auguste and Jacques Piccard, François-Alphonse Forel, founder of limnology, and the CGN steamship company. Curators have included archaeologists Pascale Bonnard and Carinne Bertola, and since 2014 geographer Lionel Gauthier.

The museum keeps the archives of the Confréries des bateliers, the boatmen's guilds that organise the lake's traditional festivals, and a room is devoted to their celebrations. A hall of lateen-sailed boats presents the craft once used on the lake, alongside an area on the Compagnie Générale de Navigation and its steamboats.

The museum faces the pleasure-boat harbour of Nyon, and its 1,000 m² of permanent and temporary displays are spread over thematic rooms, from the aquarium to the Picard space. Allow time to move between these rooms rather than expecting a single chronological route.

The museum holds the collections of Auguste and Jacques Piccard, whose submarines and stratospheric balloons are shown in a dedicated space, alongside the archives of François-Alphonse Forel, the founder of limnology. A room also addresses the risk of tsunamis on Lake Geneva, a hazard visitors rarely associate with an inland lake.