Archives d'Etat de Genève

In the Middle Ages, Geneva was subject to the authority of the bishop. From the 14th century onwards, however, the community of citizens and burghers of Geneva began to develop its autonomy by obtaining rights and privileges. This implied the development of a communal authority and the appearance of titles, legal documents proving rights, in other words, the appearance of archives. From the middle of the 15th century onwards, archives, repositories and research tools were available in Geneva.

Over time, as this community became more and more important, and then sovereign with the departure of the bishop at the beginning of the 16th century, the archives became increasingly important. Although the question of their management periodically comes up in the deliberations of the authorities, in practice it remains very summary. Unlike in other European states, there was no archivist or registrar responsible for their management. Until the end of the seventeenth century, each office kept its archives separately. In the eighteenth century, although still dispersed, efforts to reorganise them improved the situation.

Throughout this period, the archives and the inventories that describe them were created according to the needs of the administration. They serve above all to prove the titles and rights of the community. Their availability to historians is extremely limited, as archives are above all a place of state secrecy. It was not until the Restoration that the archives were gradually opened to the public. It must be said that the change of regime, a new Europe, a territory redrawn by the Congress of Vienna, the treaties of Paris and Turin as well as the entry of Geneva into the Confederation rendered a large part of the documents obsolete. The archives, which until then had been scattered in various places, were brought together and placed under the responsibility of a "guardian" in 1815. However, classification of the archives did not begin until 1839 with the appointment of the first archivist, Louis Sordet. Within the archives, history then took its place alongside legal and administrative functions. The public at the time was the generation of historians who founded the Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Genève.

The Geneva State Archives preserve archival collections of private origin - that is, all archival documents produced or received by individuals, families, associations, companies, political parties, trade unions, etc., and by any other private institution or non-public body.

Since 1986, the holdings have been inventoried in a computer database available online, called Adhemar.

You will find there: descriptive notes of the fonds classified after 1986, some digitised fonds, such as the Council registers or the civil status registers (a camera symbol at the top right of the description gives access to the images) and digitised copies of the old inventories on paper.