Petite France Audio Guide

Petite France: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Petite France

   Welcome to Petite France, one of the most photographed corners of Strasbourg. You are in the south-western part of the Grande Île, the island that forms the city's historic centre. Here the river Ill splits into a web of small channels that cascade past flower-lined quays, locks and leaning half-timbered houses. The whole district covers only about 10 hectares, yet it is one of the most famous places in Alsace. It is also known as the Tanners' Quarter, and that second name tells you what this place was really about. In the Middle Ages it was the home of tanners, millers and fishermen, working people who needed running water. It was not a postcard then. It was a busy, smelly, modest neighbourhood. Over the next few stops we will look at the surprising story behind the name, the craftsmen who built these houses, and the bridges, towers and dam that give the quarter its shape. Take your time, because every canal corner here has a tale.

2. 02

   A Little France with a Painful Past

   Let us start with the question everyone asks: why Little France? You might expect a patriotic reason, or something to do with the architecture. It is neither. The name goes back to a hospice for the incurable, called the Blatterhüs in Alsatian, which cared for people suffering from syphilis. In 1494 a great epidemic of the disease swept across Europe, and many Europeans nicknamed it the French disease. Strasbourg later took in the sick at a hospice in the Finkwiller district. That hospice was moved onto the Grande Île in the late 1680s, to a new building on the street of the mills, the rue des Moulins, which today runs along the Quai de la Petite France. Locals called the place after its patients, in the Alsatian dialect Französel, meaning little France, and the nickname gradually spread to the whole neighbourhood. So a charming name carries a rather sombre origin. Before the nineteenth century the area was not even known by it. Its parts were called am Pflanzbad, der Mühlenplan, which means the mill plan, and bei den Gedeckten Brücken, meaning by the covered bridges.

3. 03

   The Tanners and Their Houses

   Look up at the roofs, because they are the clue to the trade that shaped this quarter. The tanners who lived here built tall houses with steep, pointed roofs, narrow dormer windows and open attics. Those attics were not for show. They were where animal hides were hung to dry. The work was hard on the neighbourhood. Tanners washed their hides in the Ill, and the water suffered for it. The white and red tanners' workshops also filled the air with smells, so for a long time this was not a fashionable address. In the sixteenth century it was a poor, working-class quarter of fishermen, millers and tanners. The half-timbered houses you admire today date mostly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One famous example is the Maison des Tanneurs, a former tannery built in 1572 on the rue du Bain-aux-Plantes. It is now a restaurant, which tells you how the quarter's fortunes have turned. A small clue to spot nearby: the rue des Dentelles is often thought of as part of the district, but it was once separated from it by a moat, the Fossé des Tanneurs. Notice that its houses are often built of masonry rather than timber frames.

4. 04

   Canals, Covered Bridges and the Vauban Dam

   The waterways here were built and shaped from as early as the tenth century. They were tied to the defences of Strasbourg and used both to protect the city and to carry river trade and craft work. The Ill was the main navigable route, eventually reaching the Rhine to the north of the city. The defensive past is still visible. You will see the Pont du Faisan, the locks, the covered bridges, and the square towers that belonged to the old fortifications. The covered bridges give the district its old nickname, and a boat trip on the Ill takes you right beneath them and through the locks, which is a very different way to read the quarter. Nearby stands the Vauban Dam, a masterpiece of seventeenth-century French engineering, which was designated a historical monument in 1971. In 1966 the city added a panoramic terrace on top of it, the Terrasse Vauban. From up there you can look back over the roofs and channels and see the whole pattern of the district at once.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   Petite France is part of the historic centre of Strasbourg, which was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988. Today it is a place of Alsatian restaurants, shops and quays, welcoming millions of visitors, and during the Christmas season it joins the wider Christmas market. That market has been held every year since 1570 across the Grande Île and this quarter. Before you wander on, try a little detective work. Look for the tall roofs with open attics and imagine them hung with drying hides. Find the square towers and picture the fortifications they once belonged to. Then listen to the water, because it is the reason this entire quarter exists. The lanes are narrow, and every bend in the canal gives a new view. Follow whichever one tempts you and see what else the old tanners left behind.