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 you 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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