Record-breaking Easter egg mosaic assembled for last time

Good eggs: Putting the final touches to the last Easter mosaic on the Place de la Navigation in Ouchy © Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott

The traditional Easter egg mosaic on the Place de la Navigation in Ouchy in Lausanne was pieced together for the 24th and final time on Sunday. In total about a million eggs have been used for 24 mosaics, raising nearly CHF850,000 ($900,000) for charity.

“You have to know when to stop and move on,” said Christophe Andreae, president of the society for developing local interests in Ouchy, which overlooks Lake Geneva in western Switzerland.

“The association for families of children with cancerExternal link in French-speaking Switzerland, which we’ve supported for 14 years, now has other sources of funding. And 24 years is good. It’s a nice journey that’s come full circle today with the sun and a magnificent mosaic,” he said.

This year the number of eggs for the mosaic was limited to 20,000. “This is the right amount to redistribute easily to charities and people,” Andreae said.

The mosaic evoked Easter, Ouchy and Lake Geneva. It was drawn by children with cancer, aged 7 to 15, during a summer camp last summer.

© Keystone / Jean-christophe Bott

The 20,000 eggs, all laid in Switzerland, sold for one franc each and raised CHF50,000-CHF60,000, with the addition of various donations, according to Andreae. The money raised will be donated to the cancer association for the last time.

For charity

For a quarter of a century the concept has always been the same: for three days members of the public, organisations or businesses buy eggs which are placed by volunteers on the mosaic. At the end of Easter Sunday the eggs are donated to charities and sold to the public.

They collected funds are used to finance summer camps or to support families who, for example, have to travel regularly to the university hospital in Lausanne for their child’s treatment and do not live nearby. In French-speaking Switzerland, around 450 children suffer from cancer.

The mosaic was sometimes designed by well-known artists, such as Zep, Cosey, Burki or Pécub. In 2010 the 66,000-egg mosaic representing a drawing of TiteufExternal link, a comic series by Swiss cartoonist Zep (Philippe Chappuis), broke the record for number of eggs used, registered in the Guinness World Records.