A temperature scale for Cepheids is presented, based on Geneva photome
try. It uses new atmosphere models computed at various values of micro
turbulent velocity. The scale so-obtained is compared to other ones an
d the importance of microturbulence effects is shown. This calibration
is applied to 20 Cepheids for which the variation of microturbulence
is known. The detailed variations of temperature and gravity are deriv
ed. The behavior of the photometric gravity is in very good agreement
with the effective gravity (sum of GM/R-2 and of the derivative of the
radial velocity). Thus static atmosphere models can be used to descri
be the temperature and gravity variations in Cepheids under the follow
ing conditions: i) the microturbulence has to be taken into account, i
i) the effective gravity must be considered instead of the static grav
ity, iii) in some cases, a small phase interval around minimum radius
does not give reliable results. The temperature and bolometric correct
ions are then used to derive radii and distances via the Baade-Wesseli
nk technique. The resulting Period-Radius and Period-Luminosity relati
ons are discussed. Our results compare very well with similar analysis
based on infra-red (JHK) photometry.