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LE CREUSOT DOWNTOWN CAR RENTAL |
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Le Creusot Downtown car rental - Travel Guide |
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LE CREUSOT means one thing to French ears: the Schneider iron and steelworks, maker of the first French locomotive in 1838, the first steamship in 1839, the 75mm field gun - mainstay of World War I artillery - the ironwork of the Pont Alexandre-III and the Gare d'Austerlitz in Paris. Its successor, Creusot-Loire, now manufactures specialized steels and boilers for the nuclear industry, though, like many steelworks in Britain, it employs far fewer people than in the past, thus contributing to the region's unemployment rate which typically hovers well over 12 percent.
As you travel south through the wooded hills from Autun, nothing prepares you for this former industrial powerhouse. You arrive to see, suddenly, over the brow of a hill, spilling down the bottom of a valley, abandoned factories and workers' housing. A small street of rustic-looking workers' dwellings survives in the Combe des Mineurs, while in place du 8-Mai on the Montchanin road out of town a colossal 100-tonne Schneider drop-hammer has been set up as a monument to past glories. If you climb to the rue des Pyrénées above the Combe des Mineurs, you can see Le Creusot spread before you, including the modern Creusot-Loire steelworks, the gleaming white Château de la Verrerie and the terraces of pastel-coloured houses, against a backdrop of hills which are the northeast border of the Massif Central.
The town's main attraction is the Écomusée de la Communauté Urbaine du Creusot-Montceau-les-Mines in the Château de la Verrerie on place Schneider (Mon-Fri 9am-noon & 2-6pm, Sat & Sun 2-6pm; 20F/?3.05). Built as a glassworks in 1786-87 - Louis XVI was a shareholder before losing his head - the château was sold to the Schneider family in 1838 and transformed into their private home and the administrative centre of their business empire. The Schneiders were paternalistic but despotic employers, providing housing, schools and health care for their workers and even a theatre where Sarah Bernhardt once performed, but expecting "gratitude and obedience" in return. When a certain Dumay, one of their workers whose political interests and involvement in strikes they had been watching with disapproval, became mayor in 1870 and proclaimed adherence to the Paris Commune, he was sentenced to hard labor for life, while the army moved in to quell the unrest. They organized a private police force to keep an eye on workers' reading matter and church attendance, handed out building plots for "good behavior" and rigged municipal elections in favor of "their" candidates. In the end they became so unpopular they had to turn the château into a kind of Fort Knox. But, by one of history's delightful ironies, the last Schneider married the granddaughter of Jules Guesde, father of the French Communist Party. The château remained in the family's possession until the widow of the last incumbent bequeathed it to the town in 1969.
Today, the exhibits in the écomusée tell the story of heavy industry and agriculture in the area, with superb period photos, coin-slot push-button models of the works, steam cranes, reconstructed workshops, and models of locomotives and a photo record of the great Mistral train's run from Paris to Marseille. Many examples of the glass produce are on display, with video explaining methods of production. The peculiar cone-shaped constructions in the courtyard were the glass furnaces, recently transformed into a theatre and a chapel.
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Call Center |
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OPENING HOURS |
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| MIAMI(EST) |
Mon - Fri: 06:00 - 18:00 |
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Sat - Sun: 06:00 - 12:00 |
| LONDON (GMT) |
Mon - Fri 08:00 - 23:00 |
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Sat - Sun: 08:00 - 16:00 |
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| 1. UK |
0800 0789054 |
| 2. USA |
1 866 735 1715 |
| 3. AUSTRALIA |
1 800 210813 |
| 4. FRANCE |
0805 100863 |
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