Places to see in ( Besancon - France )
Places to see in ( Besancon - France )
Besançon is a city in eastern France, near the border with Switzerland. The old city center lies in a horseshoe bend on the Doubs River. The sprawling Citadel of Besançon perches on a hill and is home to 3 museums, a zoo and 600m-long ramparts. At the foot of the hill, Besançon Cathedral has a unique 70-dial astronomical clock that indicates sunrise and sunset, eclipses, and tides in French ports.
Hugging a bouclé (hairpin curve) of the River Doubs, the cultured and very attractive capital of Franche-Comté remains refreshingly modest and untouristy, despite charms such as a monumental Vauban citadel, a graceful 18th-century old town and France’s first public museum. In Gallo-Roman times, Vesontio (over the centuries, the name evolved to become Besançon) was an important stop on the trade routes linking Italy, the Alps and the Rhine, and some striking remains of this period survive.
Besançon (affectionately known as Besac by its inhabitants) is situated in an oxbow bend of the river Doubs (known as la Boucle). The river encircles the old town, while the imposing citadel, built by military engineer Vauban, blocks the neck of the river bend.
The city has a long history, and has been settled since the Bronze Age (ca. 1,500 BC). In Roman times, Besançon was a flourishing provincial town known as Vesontio. Some Roman remains can still be admired in the city centre. In the late Middle Ages, Besançon was a free city state within the Holy Roman Empire. From the 14th to the 17th century, Besançon and the region of Franche-Comté changed hands various times between Burgundy, Spain and France, and were finally joined with France in 1678. From then on, Besançon became an important strategic town for the French, and large fortifications were built to defend it. Besançon has however not played any major role in French history since then, and its location as a relative backwater has left the city centre largely unspoiled.
Alot to see in Besancon such as :
Citadel of Besançon
Besançon Cathedral
Museum Of Times
Astronomical clock
Parc Micaud
Museum of the Resistance and Deportation
Musée comtois
La Porte Noire
Fonds régional d'art contemporain de Franche-Comté
birthhouse of Victor Hugo
Square Castan
The Little Train of Besançon
Granvelle palace
City of Arts
Jardin botanique de Besançon
The Water Station
Fort Chaudanne
Fort Griffon
Église de la Madeleine
Fort of Bregille
Tour de la Pelote
Chapel of Our Lady of Refuge
Tour de Rivotte
Basilica of Saint-Ferjeux
Belvedere Montfaucon
Jardin des sens
Statue de Jouffroy d'Abbans
( Besancon - France ) is well know as a tourist destination because of the variety of places you can enjoy while you are visiting Besancon . Through a series of videos we will try to show you recommended places to visit in Besancon - France
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Romagne Living History
This is a short promotion film for the 89th Division tours and Living History event in November 2018 in collaboration with the museum Romagne 14-18
Le monastère de la Grande Chartreuse (Isère - France)
(F) Le monastère de la Grande Chartreuse est le premier monastère et la maison-mère de l'Ordre des Chartreux. Il est situé au pied du Grand Som, quatrième plus haut sommet du massif de la Chartreuse.
L'implantation des Chartreux dans le massif qui leur a donné son nom fait de ce site le type de l'espace monastique cartusien, bien que lordre se soit accommodé dès le xiiie siècle de sites urbains et de maisons situées en plaine, voire au bord de la mer.
Conformément à la règle cartusienne, le monastère ne se visite pas, mais un musée est installé à la Correrie, en aval du monastère. On peut y voir des reconstitutions de cellules de moines.
(EN) Grande Chartreuse is the head monastery of the Carthusian order. It is located in the Chartreuse Mountains, north of the city of Grenoble, in the commune of Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse (Isère), France. Originally, the château belonged to the See of Grenoble. In 1084, Saint Hugh gave it to hermit Saint Bruno and his followers who founded the Carthusian Order.
Today, visitors are not permitted at Grand Chartreuse, and motor vehicles are prohibited on the surrounding roads. However, a museum of the Carthusian order and the lives of its monks and nuns stands about two kilometers away.
The order is supported by the sales of Chartreuse liqueur which has been popular in France and later around the world since the early 1700s.
English poet Matthew Arnold wrote one of his finest poems, Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, while briefly staying at the monastery around 1850. The quiet, serenity, and monastic calm became, for him, the susurrations of a dying world which contrasted with what he saw as the violent emerging age of machinery. Grand Chartreuse was also described in the 1850 revision of William Wordsworth's The Prelude, Book VI, lines 416-88 (Wordsworth visited the monastery in 1790), and John Ruskin's Praeterita.
The monastery was closed in 1903 by the French state. The monks found refuge in Italy until 1929, but returned in 1940 when it was reopened.
A documentary film about the monastery entitled Into Great Silence, directed by Philip Gröning, received acclaim on the film festival circuit following its release in 2005.
Map for tourists:
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Barcelona to Paris by TGV high-speed train from €59
A journey from Barcelona Sants to Paris Gare de Lyon by TGV Duplex high-speed train, on a crisp December day, only the 2nd day of operation of direct TGVs between Barcelona & Paris. For times, fare & tickets from €39 see
The train skirts the Pyrenees, runs along the Mediterranean, past étangs (lakes) where colonies of flamingos feed one-legged in the shallows, past vineyards, the Fort de Salses, the Chateau de Montfaucon, and the pretty villages of the Rhone Valley.
There are 2 Paris-Barcelona TGV trains every day all year round and up to 4 in summer.
Les passerelles/footbridges du Monteynard (Isère - France)
(F)
(EN) Lac de Monteynard-Avignonet is an artificial water reservoir for the Électricité de France power station on the Drac River. It belongs to the department of Isère. It is bounded by the canyons of the Drac and Ebron.
The lake was created in 1961, when the 145-meter-high dam was built. The lake is 10 kilometers long, and in some places up to 300 meters wide.
This lake is often windy and wavy. It is considered to be one of the best places for windsurfing and kitesurfing in Europe. It is also an important site for fishing, as it has a great variety of fish species. Swimming in the lake is permitted.
The lake is bordered by the following municipalities: Avignonet, Cognet, Marcieu, Mayres-Savel, Monteynard, La Motte-Saint-Martin, Roissard, Saint-Arey, Sinard, Treffort.
In 2007 two simple suspension bridges were built across the Drac and Ebron. The bridges are 220 and 180 meters long, respectively, and used 1200 meters of cable.[2][3] Depending on the level of the water in the lake, the Drac bridge is 45—85 meters high above the lake. Construction of the bridges was achieved with the help of helicopters.
The bridge design was based on traditional simple suspension bridges used in the Andes (see Inca rope bridge) and Himalayas to cross deep gorges from rim to rim. Locally, the Drac and Ebron bridges are known as passerelles himalayennes (French, Himalayan footbridges). Like some traditional bridges of this type, the Drac and Ebron bridges are stabilized with cables from below the deck.
The bridges allow hiking and biking from Matheysine to Trièves, on a circuit of walking journey and adventure of 30 km route around the lake.
(F)
Map for tourists:
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Places to see in ( Paris - France ) Parc des Buttes Chaumont
Places to see in ( Paris - France ) Parc des Buttes Chaumont
The Parc des Buttes-Chaumont is a public park situated in northeastern Paris, in the 19th arrondissement. Occupying 24.7 hectares (61 acres), it is the fifth-largest park in Paris, after the Bois de Vincennes, the Bois de Boulogne, the Parc de la Villette, and the Tuileries Garden. It was opened in 1867, late in the regime of Emperor Napoleon III, and was built by Jean-Charles Alphand, who created all the major parks of Napoleon III. The park has 5.5 kilometres (3.4 miles) of roads and 2.2 kilometres (1.4 miles) of paths. The most famous feature of the park is the Temple de la Sibylle, inspired by the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy, perched at the top of a cliff fifty metres above the waters of the artificial lake
The park took its name from the bleak hill which occupied the site, which, because of the chemical composition of its soil, was almost bare of vegetation- it was called Chauve-mont, or bare hill. The area, just outside the limits of Paris until the mid-19th century, had a sinister reputation; it was close to the site of the Gibbet of Montfaucon, the notorious place where the bodies of hanged criminals were displayed after their executions from the 13th century until 1760. After the 1789 Revolution, it became a refuse dump, and then a place for cutting up horse carcasses and a depository for sewage. The director of public works of Paris and builder of the Park, Jean-Charles Alphand, reported that the site spread infectious emanations not only to the neighboring areas, but, following the direction of the wind, over the entire city. Another part of the site was a former gypsum and limestone quarry mined for the construction of buildings in Paris and in the United States. That quarry also yielded Eocene mammal fossils, including Palaeotherium, which were studied by Georges Cuvier. This not-very-promising site was chosen by Baron Haussmann, the Prefet of Paris, for the site of a new public park for the recreation and pleasure of the rapidly growing population of the new 19th and 20th arrondissements of Paris, which had been annexed to the city in 1860.
The work on the park began in 1864, under the direction of Alphand, who used all the experience and lessons he had learned in making the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes. Two years were required simply to terrace the land. Then a railroad track was laid to bring in cars carrying two hundred thousand cubic meters of topsoil. A thousand workers remade the landscape, digging a lake and shaping the lawns and hillsides. Explosives were used to sculpt the buttes themselves and the former quarry into a picturesque mountain fifty meters high with cliffs, an interior grotto, pinnacles and arches. Hydraulic pumps were installed to lift the water from the canal of the Ourcq River up the highest point on the promontory, to create a dramatic waterfall.
The heart of the park is an artificial lake of 1.5 hectares (3.7 acres) surrounding the Île de la Belvédère, a rocky island with steep cliffs made from the old gypsum quarry. On the top is the Temple de la Sibylle, fifty meters above the lake. The island is connected by two bridges with the rest of the park, the island is surrounded by paths, and a steep stairway of 173 steps leads from the top of the belvedere down through the grotto to the edge of the lake.
The most famous feature of the park is the Temple de la Sibylle, a miniature version of the famous ancient Roman Temple of Vesta in Tivoli, Italy. The original temple was the subject of many romantic landscape paintings from the 17th to the 19th century, and inspired similar architectural follies in the English landscape garden of the 18th century. The temple was designed by Gabriel Davioud, the city architect for Paris, who designed picturesque monuments for the Bois de Boulogne, Bois de Vincennes, Parc Monceau, and other city parks. He also designed some of the most famous fountains of Paris, including the Fontaine Saint-Michel. The temple was finished in 1867.
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Livernon France Departement Lot. Midi Pyreénées
La forteresse de Mornas (Vaucluse - France)
(EN) Built in XIth c. by the earl of Toulouse, is dominates the Rhone valley. Most of it has been destoyed and ruins of the chateau and fortress are currently being restored. Animated and period costume visits in the summer.
(F) La forteresse de Mornas, dans le département du Vaucluse, se dresse sur un éperon rocheux de la rive gauche du Rhône, dominant le village de Mornas établi à son pied et les environs.
L'occupation du site de la forteresse remonte au moins à l'époque romaine. Les vestiges d'un oppidum ont été découverts au sud-est de la forteresse, de même que plusieurs sites contemporains en contre-bas de la montagne.
Mornas est mentionné pour la première fois au ixe siècle (Rupea Morenata), et fut tour à tour propriété de l'abbaye d'Aniane3, de l'archevêché d'Arles puis des Comtes de Toulouse. Tandis qu'un village se développe au pied de la montagne, le site du castrum se fortifie en continuité avec l'oppidum romain. Ces premières fortifications étaient très probablement en bois..
La forteresse va alors être longuement disputée par les comtes de Toulouse et les archevêques d'Arles, en raison notamment de sa position stratégique. En 1209, pendant la Croisade contre les Albigeois, le comte Raymond V, accusé de sympathiser avec les hérétiques, est forcé de léguer plusieurs de ses places fortes, dont Mornas, à l'Église. Mornas repasse ainsi sous le giron de l'archevêque d'Arles, avant d'être reprise par le Comte de Toulouse jusqu'au Traité de Paris en 1229, selon lequel toutes les possessions comtales à l'Est du Rhône passent sous l'autorité du Roi de France, à l'exception du Comtat Venaissin, et de facto Mornas, qui appartient désormais au pape5. Ce dernier confie l'administration du Comté au Roi de France jusqu'en 1274, date à laquelle le pape Grégoire X reprend en main son administration. La forteresse est placée sous la tutelle des Chevaliers de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem. Ces derniers rétrocèdent la forteresse, coûteuse à entretenir, en 1305.
La place-forte jouera un rôle important de défense lors de la Guerre de Cent Ans, notamment contre les compagnies de routiers qui ravagent le pays à plusieurs reprise. Ces troubles cessent à la fin du xive siècle, marquant ainsi le début d'une période d'accalmie qui durera jusqu'à la deuxième moitié du xvie siècle et les Guerres de Religion.
Négligée par l'Église pendant tout ce temps, la forteresse, mal entretenue, tombe facilement entre les mains des troupes protestantes en 1562 dirigées par Montbrun, lieutenant du Baron des Adrets, qui fait précipiter les réfugiés et la garnison du haut de la falaise8. Dans les années qui suivent Mornas est alors successivement aux mains des catholiques et des huguenots.
Les troubles cessèrent à la fin du xvie siècle, et la forteresse, perdant son rôle défensif, tombe peu à peu dans l'oubli et l'abandon. À partir de 1977, sa restauration est entreprise sous l'impulsion de l'association des Amis de Mornas. La réhabilitation se poursuit encore aujourd'hui, et de nombreuses animations et reconstitutions sont proposées pendant la période estivale notamment.
(Wikipedia)
Map for tourists:
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NORMANDY AMERICAN CEMETERY AND MEMORIAL
I short video I shot while visiting the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial on July 1, 2012. If you are an American citizen and visit this site, you will find yourself overwhelmed with emotion while walking around there. I sure did.
Great War Walk 2008. The Somme to Verdun / Verdun to Cologne.
A 90th anniversary tribute walk which started at Fricourt German Cemetery, The Somme on the 27th September and finished at Cologne, Germany at 11am on Armistice Day, the 11th November 2008.