Lake Geneva, whose Celtic name "Léman" simply means "big water," lives up to it. At 72 kilometres long and 309 metres deep, it is the largest lake in Western Europe and the continent's second deepest. It holds the biggest freshwater reserve on the continent. Ninety percent of Geneva's drinking water comes from it. You can swim in it without getting sick, which is not something you can say about most landmark bodies of water.

The stories around its shores are equally outsized. Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein on the hill above the bay in the dismal summer of 1816, when volcanic ash had blotted out the sun across Europe. Casanova once washed the feet of a Protestant priest's daughters in a lakeside park. The sailing conditions are so treacherous that world-famous navigators regularly lose to locals.

VoiceMap's tours trace all of this, using the lake to connect Geneva's Celtic origins to its unlikely literary history, its mountain sailing culture and its role as Europe's greatest freshwater resource.