Saturday, October 2, 2021

Vichy - France

Vichy is a spa and resort town in the French region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, central France. This year the town became part of the transnational UNESCO World Heritage Site under the name "Great Spa Towns of Europe" because of its famous baths and its architectural testimony to the popularity of spa towns in Europe from the 18th through 20th centuries. - in: wikpedia
I was still missing this site and got this card, with the town's old train station, thanks to Jeroen.

In the 1850s, Vichy was a small budding spa resort. Its hot springs attracted visitors as did others in the region that had been known since Roman times. Then in July 1861 Napoleon III, emperor of France from 1852 to 1870, come to visit. He came to find relief from his rheumatism, and by the time he left, feeling better, he signed a decree throwing his full imperial weight behind the town’s development, both for his own annual pleasure while taking the waters, i.e. la cure, and to create an economic rival to the great 19th-century spa towns to the east, such Baden-Baden in Germany. A town of leisure and luxury began to grow immediately.

M. G. Editions * Clichés: P. Launay
Boosting Vichy’s place on the map in the 1860s naturally implied the construction of a new train station, now the town’s old station, which has been restored, and urban planning in the streets radiating from the train station to the hot springs, a distance of about a half-mile that is the commercial heart of the town. - in: http://francerevisited.com

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