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STRASBOURG - FRANCE
STRASBOURG owes both its name - "the city of the roads" -
and its wealth to its position on the west bank of the Rhine, long one of
the great natural transport arteries of Europe. The city's medieval
commercial pre-eminence was damaged by too close an involvement in the
religious struggles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but
recovered with the city's absorption into France in 1681. Along with the
rest of Alsace, Strasbourg suffered annexation by Germany from 1871 to the
end of World War I and again from 1940 to 1944.
Today old animosities have been submerged in the
togetherness of the European Union, of which, as the seat of the Council
of Europe, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Parliament,
Strasbourg is one of the capitals. Prosperous, beautiful and modern, with
an orderliness that is Germanic rather than Latin, the city is big enough
- with a population of over a quarter of a million people - to have a
metropolitan air without being overwhelming. It has one of the loveliest
cathedrals in France and one of the oldest and most active universities:
this is the one city in eastern France that is definitely worth a special
detour The City
It isn't difficult to find your way around Strasbourg on foot, as the city
centre is concentrated on a small island encircled by the River Ill . The
tourist office can provide a map (3F/?0.46 for the one with all the
museums and sights marked
on it; free otherwise), but be warned - several of the
street names are not marked. However, it's a nice town to lose yourself
in.
Visible throughout the city is the magnificent filigree
spire of the pink cathedral that dominates not just the city but most of
Alsace; it is to the south of this building that you'll find the cream of
the museums. To the north of here, place Kléber is the heart of the
commercial district, and, to the west, place Gutenberg is nominally the
main square. About a fifteen-minute walk west on the tip of the island is
Petite France , where timber-framed houses and gently flowing canals hark
back to the city's medieval trades of tanning and dyeing.
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