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Strasbourg townscape
Strasbourg (German Straßburg,
"town of roads") is the capital and principal city of the Alsace région of eastern France. It is situated on the river Ill, where it flows into the
Rhine on the frontier with Germany.
Population: 250,000. Population of the metropolitan area (in French: aire
urbaine) at the 1999 census was 612,104. Including the part of the metropolitan area which is on German territory,
population was estimated in 1999 at around 650,000. It is the préfecture (capital) of the Bas-Rhin département.
Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as of road, rail and river communications. It is
the seat of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights and it hosts the
new seat of the European Parliament after the asbestos scandal in the 1980s.
Sights
The city is known for its sandstone gothic cathedral, and for its medieval cityscape of
rhineland black and white timber-framed buildings, particularly in the Petite-France district alongside the river Ill, which has been declared a World Heritage site.
History
1888 German map of Strasbourg
At the site of Strasbourg, the Romans established a military outpost and
named it Argentoratum. It belonged to the Germania
Superior Roman province. From the 4th century, Strasbourg was the seat of a bishopric. The
town was occupied successively in the 5th century by Alamanni, Huns and Franks.
In 842, Strasbourg was the site of the Oath of Strasbourg. A major commercial centre in the later Middle Ages, it became in 1262 a Free City of the Holy Roman Empire, with a
broad-based city government from 1332. The minster of Strasbourg was completed in 1439, and became the
World's Tallest Building, surpassing the Great Pyramid of Giza. During the 1520s the city embraced the religious teachings of Martin
Luther, whose adherents established a university in the following century.
Annexing Strasbourg in September 1681, France was confirmed in possession of the city by
the Treaty of Ryswick (1697). The official policy of religious intolerance which drove many Protestants from France after the Edict
of Fontainebleau (1685) was not applied in Strasbourg, as the Edict of Nantes (1598) had still been
in effect in France at the time of the city's annexation. With the growth of industry and commerce, the city's population tripled
in the 19th century to 150,000.
Annexed to the newly-established German Empire, as part of Alsace-Lorraine, in 1871 following the
Franco-Prussian War (Treaty of Frankfurt), the city was restored to France after World War I, in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles. It was again part of Germany during
World War II, from 1940 to 1945.
Education
A campus of the École nationale
d'administration is located in Strasbourg, the other one being in Paris.
There are three universities in Strasbourg:
Transportation
A tramway is operated in Strasbourg since 1994.
Miscellaneous
Johann Goethe, the playwright, and Johann Gutenberg, the inventor of printing with movable type, were both former residents of
Strasbourg.
The town is sometimes considered as the capital of European Union although Brussels, Belgium, is more often considered as the unofficial capital of the Union.
See also
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