Saint-Dié-des-Vosges
Saint-Dié-des-Vosges is a town of 20,000 people (2018) in Lorraine.
Understand
A major part was destroyed in November, 1944 and was rebuilt largely in a material imitating red sandstone.
After World War II, the right bank of the river Meurthe was completely razed and most people lived outside the town in wood cabins for decades. The radical plan created by Le Corbusier in 1945, which called for a large plaza with factories and other buildings in the heart of the city, was rejected in 1947, and only one private factory belonging to Jean-Jacques Duval was ever built. There were no means nor materials in this terrible period and the great street called "rue Thiers" was finished only at the end of 1954.
The river Meurthe flows in the Permian basin of Saint-Dié surrounded by wooded mountains Ormont, Kemberg and La Madeleine. The peaks of these mountains are 550 metres (1,800 feet) high, and are composed of Triassic formations, especially the so-called "Vosges sandstone", a kind of red sandstone.
- 🌍 Office de Tourisme Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, 6 Quai du Maréchal Leclerc, ☏ +33 3 29 42 22 22.
Get in
Saint-Dié is 80 km (50 mi) southeast of Nancy and 45 km (28 mi) of Lunéville.
By train
🌍 Saint-Dié-des-Vosges train station is served approximately once an hour by regional express trains (TER) from Nancy via Lunéville, the journey takes a little over an hour. In Nancy there is a connection to the TGV from Paris. A TER runs five times a day from Épinal to Saint-Dié, also taking an hour.
From Strasbourg there is only one TER to Saint-Dié a day. The nearest more important train station on the Alsatian side is in Sélestat, 45 km away, on the Strasbourg - Colmar - Mulhouse - Basel route . There you can change to the bus to Saint-Dié every two hours. From Strasbourg it takes a total of 1 hr 45 min by bus and train, from Colmar 1½ hours, from Basel SBB 2 hr 10 min.
By bus
On weekdays, bus 30428 runs every two hours from Sélestat train station to Saint-Dié, travel time 70 minutes.
By car
Saint-Dié-des-Vosges is on the route nationale N59 . This leads from Sélestat/Strasbourg in one direction and Lunéville/Nancy in the other direction. From the prefecture town of Épinal you can get to Saint-Dié via the D420 departmental road (50 km, 55 minutes). From Nancy it is approx. 85 km (driving time about an hour); 90 km from Strasbourg (just under 1½ hours).
Get around
The urban transit bus network is called "Sylvia".
See
- 🌍 Usine Claude et Duval, 1 avenue de Robache (150 m north of the cathedral). A textile factory designed by Le Corbusier. It's one of 17 of his buildings worldwide that are inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
- 🌍 Saint-Dié Cathedral. The cathedral has a Gothic nave and choir designed in the 14th century; the portal of red stone was created by Giovanni Betto in the beginning of the 18th century. A cloister, begun in the 14th century but never finished, contains a stone pulpit, and connects with the Petite-Eglise or Notre-Dame-de-Galilée, a well-preserved specimen of Romanesque architecture of the 12th century. All of the monuments were restored or rebuilt in the same manner after 1950.
- Église Notre-Dame-de-Galilée (directly adjacent to the cathedral, on the other side of the cloister). Romanesque church from the 12th century.
- 🌍 Église Saint-Martin, Rue d'Hellieule. Neo-Romanesque church made of reddish sandstone from 1902 with a steep tower.
- 🌍 Chapelle du Petit-Saint-Dié, 7 rue Déodat (300 m southwest of the train station). The chapel was built in the 15th century on the site of the former house chapel and burial place of Saint Deodatus (namesake and patron saint of Saint-Dié).
- 🌍 Tour de la Liberté, Parc Jean Mansuy. The Tower of Freedom was built in 1989 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. After the celebrations in Saint-Dié-des-Vosges, it was rebuilt and opened to the public on July 14, 1990.,
- 🌍 Pierre-Noël Museum. Regional museum of the Vosges with archaeological finds from Celtic and Roman times, paintings by local artists from the 17th to 20th centuries, handicraft objects (faience and porcelain), militaria, prepared animals and objects from traditional everyday culture.
- 🌍 Celtic camp from La Bure (6 km north of the city centre). Fortified high altitude site from the 2nd to 1st century BC.
Do
- The city has 220 km of marked hiking trails including the #533 long-distance hiking trail linking Moselle Lorraine to the Vosges counties.
- Le Chemin des Abbayes. Short railway cycle path that connects 3 abbeys, 8 km from Étival to Senones.