The Ill in the Petite France quarter of Strasbourg
by RicardMN Photography
Title
The Ill in the Petite France quarter of Strasbourg
Artist
RicardMN Photography
Medium
Photograph
Description
The Ill river in the Petite France quarter of Strasbourg, capital and largest city of the Grand Est region of France. It is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located at the border with Germany in the historic region of Alsace, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin department.
The Ill is a river in Alsace, in north-eastern France. It is a left bank, or western, tributary of the Rhine.
Flowing through the city of Strasbourg, the river forms part of the 17th-century fortifications and passes through a series of locks and channels in the picturesque old town, including the Petite France quarter, where its waters were once used to power mills and tanneries. One of these channels is the Canal du Faux-Rempart that, together with the main channel of the Ill, surrounds the Grande Île or historic centre of Strasbourg.
La Petite France is a historic quarter of the city of Strasbourg in eastern France. It is located at the western end of the Grande Île, which contains the historical centre of the city. At Petite France, the River Ill splits up into a number of channels that cascade through an area that was, in the Middle Ages, home to the city's tanners, millers and fishermen, and is now one of Strasbourg's main tourist attractions. Petite France forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Grande Île, designated in 1988.
Just upstream of Petite France, the River Ill flows through the Barrage Vauban, a defensive structure built at the end of the 17th century. Downstream of this, the river splits into the Canal du Faux-Rempart, which flows to the north of the Grande Île, and four channels which flow through the Petite France quarter before reuniting in the main channel of the river, flowing to the south of the Grande Île. These four channels are spanned by the Ponts Couverts, an earlier defensive structure of three bridges and four towers that, despite its name, has not been covered since the 18th century.
Downstream of the Ponts Couverts, the four channels flow through an area of largely half-timbered buildings which, together with the narrow lanes and footbridges that connect them, mostly date from the 16th and 17th centuries. The sloping roofs of many of the buildings include open lofts where hides were once dried. Three of the four channels flowing through the quarter run over weirs that once drove mills and other industries, whilst the northernmost channel is navigable. This passes through a lock and the Pont du Faisan swing bridge in the centre of the quarter, and is largely used by passenger trip boats.
The name Petite-France ("Little France") was not given for patriotic or architectural reasons. It comes from the "hospice of the syphilitic" (Hospice des Vérolés, in French), which was built in the late fifteenth century on this island, to cure persons with syphilis, then called Franzosenkrankheit ("French disease") in German. (Description from wikipedia)
Uploaded
October 28th, 2019
Statistics
Viewed 569 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/22/2024 at 3:03 AM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
Similar Images
Comments (17)
Recently Viewed
