Strasbourg Totally Explained

Everything about Strasbourg totally explained

|region= Alsace |department= Bas-Rhin (67) |mayor= Roland Ries |party = PS |mandate = 2008-2014 |area= 78.26 |date-population= 2004 estimate |population= 272.800 |population-ranking=7th in France |date-density= 2004 |density= 3.486 |UU-area= 222 |UU-area-date= 1999 |UU-pop= 427.245 |UU-pop-date= 1999 |AU-area= 1.351.5 |AU-area-date= 1999 |AU-pop-date= 2007 |AU-pop= 702.412 |intercom-details2 = Urban Community of Strasbourg |}} Strasbourg (; Alsatian: Strossburi, [ˈʃd̥rɔːsb̥uri]; [ˈʃtʁaːsbʊʁk]) is the capital and principal city of the Alsace région in northeastern France, with 702,412 inhabitants in the metropolitan area in 2007, it's the ninth largest in France. Located close to the border with Germany, it's the préfecture (capital) of the Bas-Rhin département.
Strasbourg is the seat of several European institutions such as the Council of Europe with its European Court of Human Rights, its European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and its European Audiovisual Observatory, the Eurocorps as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union. Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as of road, rail, and river communications. The port of Strasbourg is the second largest on the Rhine after Duisburg, Germany. The city is the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine.
Strasbourg's historic centre, the Grande Île ("Grand Island"), was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honor was placed on an entire city centre. Strasbourg is fused into the Franco-German culture, and has been a bridge of unity between France and Germany for centuries, especially because of its University and the co-existence of catholic and protestant culture.

Etymology

The city's Gallicized name is of Germanic origin and means "town (at the crossing) of roads". The modern Stras- is cognate to the German Straße / Strasse which itself is derived from Latin ("street"), while -bourg is cognate to the German -burg ("fortress, town, citadel"), the English borough and the French bourg ("village").

Geography and climate

Strasbourg is situated on the Ill River, where it flows into the Rhine on the border with Germany, across from the German town Kehl. The city is situated in the Rhine valley, approximately 20 kilometers east of the Vosges Mountains and 25 kilometers west of the Black Forest. Winds coming from either direction being often deflected by these natural barriers, the average annual precipitation is low and the perceived summer temperatures can be inordinately high. The defective natural ventilation also makes Strasbourg one of the most atmospherically polluted cities of France The metropolitan area of Strasbourg includes 702.412 inhabitants (2007), while the Eurodistrict had 868,000 inhabitants in 2005.

Culture

Strasbourg is the seat of some internationally reputed institutions in the musical and dramatic domain :

The philharmonic orchestra Orchestre philharmonique de Strasbourg, founded in 1855, one of the oldest symphonic orchestras in western Europe.

The Opéra national du Rhin

The Théâtre national de Strasbourg

The Percussions de Strasbourg

The Théâtre du Maillon

The "Laiterie" Other theatres are the Théâtre jeune public, the TAPS Scala, the Kafteur...

Events

Musica, international festival of contemporary classical music (autumn)

Festival international de Strasbourg (founded in 1932), festival of classical music and jazz (summer)

Festival des Artefacts, festival of contemporary non-classical music

Les Nuits de l'Ososphère

The Spectre Film Festival is an annual film festival that's devoted to science fiction, horror and fantasy.

Education

Universities and schools

Strasbourg, which was a humanism centre, has a long history of higher-education excellence, merging French and German intellectual traditions. Although Strasbourg had been annexed by the Kingdom of France in 1683, it still remained connected to the German-speaking intellectual world throughout the 18th century and the university attracted numerous students from the Holy Roman Empire, including Goethe, Metternich and Montgelas, who studied law in Strasbourg, among the most prominent. Nowadays, Strasbourg is known to offer among the best university courses in France, after Paris.
There are three universities in Strasbourg, with an approximate total of 48,500 students as of 2007 (another 4,500 students are being taught at one of the diverse post-graduate schools):

Strasbourg I - Louis Pasteur University

Strasbourg II - Marc Bloch University

Strasbourg III - Robert Schuman University The prestigious Institut d'études politiques de Strasbourg is part of Robert Schuman University.
   The campus of the École nationale d'administration (ENA) is located in Strasbourg (the former one being in Paris). The location of the "new" ENA - which trains most of the nation's high-ranking civil servants - was meant to give a European vocation to the school.
   The École supérieure des Arts décoratifs (ESAD) is an art school of Europe-wide reputation.
   The permanent campus of the International Space University (ISU) is located in the south of Strasbourg (Illkirch-Graffenstaden)
   Other important schools include the INSA (Institut national des sciences appliquées), the INET (Institut national des études territoriales), the ENGEES (École nationale du génie de l'eau et de l'environnement de Strasbourg), and the CUEJ (Centre universitaire d'enseignement du journalisme).

Libraries

The Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire de Strasbourg (BNUS) is, with its collection of more than 3,000,000 titles, the second largest library in France after the Bibliothèque nationale de France. It was founded by the German administration after the complete destruction of the previous municipal library in 1871 and holds the unique status of being simultaneously a student's and a national library.
The municipal library Bibliothèque municipale de Strasbourg (BMS) administrates a network of ten medium-sized librairies in different areas of the town. A six story high Grande bibliothèque, the Médiathèque André Malraux, is currently being built in former port areas close to the centre and is scheduled to open mid-2008. Among the cities of the Communauté urbaine, most have their own library, Illkirch-Graffenstaden's being the largest and most modern as of 2007.

Transport

Strasbourg has its own airport, serving a limited number of destinations. Train services operate eastward to Offenburg and Karlsruhe in Germany, westward to Metz and Paris, and southward to Basel. Since June 10, 2007, Strasbourg is linked to the European high-speed train network by the TGV Est (Paris-Strasbourg). The TGV Rhin-Rhône (Strasbourg-Lyon) is currently under construction and due to open in 2012.
City transportation in Strasbourg is served by a modern-looking tram system that has been operated since 1994 by the regional transit company Compagnie des transports strasbourgeois. A former tram system, partly following different routes, had been operating since 1878 but was ultimately dismantled in 1960.
Being a city next to the Rhine and along some of its most important canals (Marne-Rhine Canal, Grand Canal d'Alsace), while crossed by the Ill, Strasbourg has always been an important centre of fluvial navigation, as is attested by archeological findings as well as the important activity of the Port autonome de Strasbourg. Water tourism inside the city proper attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists yearly.

European role

Institutions

Strasbourg is the seat of over twenty international institutions, most famously of the Council of Europe and of the European Parliament, of which it's the official seat. Strasbourg is considered the legislative and democratic capital of the European Union, while Brussels is considered the executive and administrative capital and Luxembourg the judiciary and financial capital. Strasbourg is:

since 1920 the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine.

since 1949 the seat of the Council of Europe with all the bodies and organisations affiliated to this institution

since 1952 the seat of the European Parliament

the seat of the European Ombudsman

the seat of the Eurocorps headquarters,

the seat of the Franco-German television channel Arte

the seat of the European Science Foundation

the seat of the International Institute of Human Rights

the seat of the Human Frontier Science Program

the seat of the International Commission on Civil Status

the seat of the Assembly of European Regions

the seat of the Centre for European Studies

Eurodistrict

France and Germany have created a Eurodistrict straddling the Rhine, combining the Greater Strasbourg and the Ortenau district of Baden-Württemberg, with some common administration. The combined population of this district was 868,000 as of 2006.

Sports

Internationally-renowned teams from Strasbourg are the "Racing Club" (football), the "SIG" (basketball) and the "Étoile noire" (hockey). The women's tennis tournament "Internationaux de Strasbourg" is one of the most important French tournaments of its kind outside Roland-Garros.

Famous people

In chronological order, famous people born in Strasbourg include: Johannes Tauler, Sebastian Brant, Jean Baptiste Kléber, Louis Ramond de Carbonnières, Ludwig I of Bavaria, Gustave Doré, Émile Waldteufel, Jean/Hans Arp, Charles Münch, Hans Bethe, Marcel Marceau, Tomi Ungerer and Arsène Wenger.
In chronological order, famous residents of Strasbourg include: Johannes Gutenberg, Hans Baldung, Martin Bucer, John Calvin, Joachim Meyer, Johann Carolus, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, Georg Büchner, Louis Pasteur, Ferdinand Braun, Albrecht Kossel, Georg Simmel, Albert Schweitzer, Otto Klemperer, Marc Bloch, Alberto Fujimori, Paul Ricoeur and Jean-Marie Lehn.

Twin towns

Strasbourg is twinned with:

Boston, United States (since 1960)

Leicester, United Kingdom (since 1960)

Stuttgart, Germany (then West-Germany) (since 1962)

Dresden, Germany (ex-East-Germany) (since 1990)

Ramat Gan, Israel (since 1991)

Istanbul, Turkey

Jacmel, Haiti (since 1996) (Coopération décentralisée)

Novgorod, Russia (since 1997) (Coopération décentralisée)

Fes, Morocco (Coopération décentralisée)

Strasbourg in popular culture

One of the longest chapters of Lawrence Sterne's novel Tristram Shandy ("Slawkenbergius's tale") takes place in Strasbourg.

An episode of Matthew Gregory Lewis's novel The Monk takes place in the forests then surrounding Strasbourg.

British art-punk band The Rakes had a minor hit in 2005 with, their song "Strasbourg". This song features witty lyrics with themes of espionage and vodka and includes a cleverly-placed count of 'eins, zwei, drei, vier!!', even though Strasbourg's most common spoken language is French.

On their 1974 album Hamburger Concerto, Dutch progressive band Focus included a track called "La Cathédrale de Strasbourg", which included chimes from a cathedral-like bell.Further Information

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