DISCOVER STRASBOURG
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region of northeastern France, with approximately 650,000 inhabitants in the metropolitan area (1999). Located close to the border with Germany, it is the prefecture (capital) of the Bas-Rhin departement.
The city's Germanic name means "town (at the crossing) of roads". Stras- is cognate to the English street from the German equivalent of the word, Strasse, while -bourg from the German -burg ("fortress, town") is cognate to the English borough.
Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as of road, rail and river communications.Strasbourg is the seat of the Council of Europe, of the European Court of Human Rights and of the European Parliament, though the latter also holds sessions in Brussels.
Strasbourg is situated on the Ill River, where it flows into the Rhine on the frontier with Germany. The German town across the Rhine is Kehl. The city is situated in the Vallee du Rhin (Rhine valley), approximately 20 kms east of the Vosges mountains and 25 kms west of the Black Forest.
Winds coming from either direction being generally held up, summer temperatures can be inordinately high. The defective natural ventilation also makes Strasbourg one of the most atmospherically polluted cities of France, although the progressive disappearance of heavy industry as well as effective measures of traffic regulation in and around the city are showing encouraging results.
 MAIN SIGHTS OF STRASBOURG
The city is chiefly known for its sandstone Gothic Cathedral with its famous astronomical clock, and for its medieval cityscape of Rhineland black and white timber-framed buildings, particularly in the Petite-France district alongside the Ill and in the streets and squares surrounding the cathedral, where the renowned Maison Kammerzell stands out.
Strasbourg's historic centre, the Grande Île (great island), has been classified a World Heritage site by the UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honor was placed on an entire city centre. In addition to the cathedral, Strasbourg houses several other medieval churches that have survived the many wars and destructions that have plagued the city: the Romanesque Eglise Saint-Etienne, partly destroyed in 1944 by Anglo-American bombing raids, the part Romanesque, part Gothic, very large Eglise Saint-Thomas with its Silbermann organ on which W. A. Mozart and Albert Schweitzer played, the Gothic Eglise Saint-Pierre-le-Jeune protestant with its crypt dating back to the 5th century, the Gothic Eglise Saint-Guillaume with its fine early-Renaissance stained glass and furniture, etc.
The Neo-gothic church Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux catholique (there is also an adjacent church Saint-Pierre-le-Vieux protestant) serves as a shrine for several 15th-century woodworked and painted altars coming from other, now destroyed churches and installed there for public display. Among the numerous secular medieval buildings, the monumental Ancienne Douane (old custom-house) stands out.
The German Renaissance has bequeathed the city some noteworthy buildings (especially the current Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie, former town hall, on Place Gutenberg), as did the French Baroque and Classicism with several palaces, among which the Palais Rohan (now housing three museums) is the most spectacular. Others are the Hotel du Prefet, the Hotel des Deux-Ponts and the city-hall Hotel de Ville (hotel particulier meaning palace) etc. The largest baroque building of Strasbourg though is the 1720s main building of the Hopital civil. As for French Neo-classicism, it is the Opera house on Place Broglie that most prestigiously represents this style.
Strasbourg also offers high-class eclecticist buildings in its very extended German district (Place de la Republique, Place de l'Universite, Place Brant, Place Arnold), being the main memory of Wilhelmian architecture since most of the major cities in Germany proper suffered intensive damages during World War II. Streets, boulevards and avenues like Avenue de la Forêt Noire, Avenue des Vosges, Avenue d'Alsace, Avenue de la Marseillaise, Avenue de la Liberte, Boulevard de la Victoire, Rue Sellenick, Rue du General de Castelnau, Rue du Marechal Foch and Rue du Marechal Joffre are homogenous, surprisingly high (up to seven stores) and broad examples of German urban lay-out and of this architectural style that summons and mixes up five centuries of European architecture as well as Neo-Egyptian, Neo-Greek and Neo-Babylonian styles. The former imperial palace Palais du Rhin, the most political and thus heavily criticised of all German Strasbourg buildings epitomises the grand scale and stylistical sturdiness of this period.
But the two most handsome and ornate buildings of these times are the École internationale des Pontonniers (the former Jungmädchenschule) with its towers, turrets and multiple round and square angles and the École des Arts decoratifs with its lavishly ornate facade of painted bricks, woodwork and majolica.
Impressive examples of prussian military architecture of the 1880s can be found along the newly (re)opened Rue du Rempart, displaying large scale fortifications among which the aptly named Kriegstor (war gate).
As for modern and contemporary architecture, Strasbourg possesses some fine Art Nouveau buildings (the extended Palais des Fêtes, some houses and villas on Avenue de la Robertsau and Rue Sleidan), good examples of post-World War II functional architecture (the Cite Rotterdam, for which Le Corbusier did not succeed in the architectural contest) and, in the very extended Quartier Europeen, some spectacular administrative buildings of sometimes utterly large size, among which the European Court of Human Rights by Richard Rogers is arguably the finest.
Other noticeable contemporary buildings are the new Music school (Cite de la Musique et de la Danse), the Musee d'Art moderne et contemporain and the Hotel du Departement facing it, as well as, in the outskirts, the tramway-station Hoenheim-Nord designed by Zaha Hadid.
Finally, the city is also home to some beautiful bridges, among which the medieval Ponts Couverts with its four towers is the most spectacular.
Next to it is another part of the Vauban fortifications, the barrage Vauban. Other nice bridges are the ornate 19th-century Pont de la Fonderie (stone) and Pont d'Auvergne (iron), as well as the futuristic Passerelle over the Rhine, opened in 2004.
PARKS OF STRASBOURG
Strasbourg also features a number of prominent parks, of which several are of cultural and historical interest: the Parc de l'Orangerie, created for Josephine de Beauharnais and displaying noteworthy French gardens, a neo-classical castle and a small zoo; the Parc de la Citadelle, built around impressive remains of the fortifications erected by Sebastien le Prestre de Vauban; the Parc de Pourtales, laid out in English style around a Neo-baroque castle that now houses the Schiller International University, and featuring an open-air museum of contemporary sculpture (works by Barry Flanagan, Ernest Pignon-Ernest, Claudio Parmiggiani, Stephan Balkenhol...).
The Jardin Botanique (botanical garden) was created under the German administration next to the Observatory of Strasbourg, built in 1881, and still owns some greenhouses of those times. The Parc des Contades, although the oldest park of the city, was completely remodeled after World War II. The futuristic Parc des Poteries is an example of European park-conception in the late 1990s. The Jardin des deux Rives, spread over Strasbourg and Kehl on both sides of the Rhine, is the most recent (2004) and most extended (60 hectare) park of the agglomeration.
MUSEUMS OF STRASBOURG
For its comparatively small size, Strasbourg displays a large quantity and variety of museums :
- The Musee des Beaux-Arts owns paintings by Hans Memling, Francisco de Goya, Tintoretto, Paolo Veronese, Giotto di Bondone, Sandro Botticelli, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, El Greco, Correggio, Cima da Conegliano and Piero di Cosimo, among others.
- The Musee de l'Oeuvre Notre-Dame (located in a part-Gothic, part-Renaissance building next to the Cathedral) houses a large and renowned collection of medieval and Renaissance upper-Rhenish art, among which original sculptures, plans and stained glass from the Cathedral and paintings by Hans Baldung and Sebastian Stoskopff.
- The Musee d'art moderne et contemporain is among the largest museums of its kind in France.
- The Musee des Arts decoratifs, located in the sumptuous former residence of the cardinals of Rohan, the palais Rohan, displays a reputable collection of 18th century furniture and china.
- The Musee archeologique presents a vast display of regional findings from the first ages of man to the 6th century, focussing especially on the Roman and Celtic period.
- The very large Musee Alsacien is dedicated to every aspects of traditional alsacian daily life.
- The Musee zoologique is one of the oldest in France and is especially famous for its gigantic collection of birds.
- Le Vaisseau (the vessel) is a science and technology centre, especially designed for children.
- The Musee historique is closed until June 2007. It is dedicated to the tumultuous history of the city and displays among other things the Grüselhorn, the medieval horn that was blown every evening at 10 to order the Jews out of the city.
- The Cabinet des estampes et des dessins displays six centuries of drawings and engravings.
- The Collection Tomi Ungerer (now spread over two locations but soon to be installed in a spacious single builmding) is dedicated to the artist's original drawings and sketches and to his large collection of ancient toys.
- The Musee de la Navigation sur le Rhin, also going by the name of Naviscope, located in an old boat, is dedicated to the history of commercial navigation on the Rhine.
- The Musee de Sismologie et Magnetisme terrestre, the Musee Pasteur and the Musee d'Égyptologie are all three part of the University and only open to public certain hours a week.
From Wikipedia.org
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