Tourist information -
Strasbourg
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
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.
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