Jean-Jacques Rifaud (1786-1852) is known for its pionnering discoveries and for a few publications fairly clumsy. He also left some important archives, of which a few thousand new pages have recently been added to the inventory of the Bibliothèque de Genève. In addition to Egypt, these documents also concern Venice, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland. After a brief presentation of the Egyptian archives, this article focuses on his descriptions of Geneva, highlighting the author's bipolar personality, his pretensions, and the lack of originality of his observations.