Petite-France
Canal-laced tanners' and millers' quarter of half-timbered houses with steep, vented drying-attics.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Petite-France in Strasbourg treats the quarter as a working factory floor, not a postcard scene: mill wheels once turned day and night on channels that ground grain, brewed beer and cut ice, while the powerful tanners' guild built its headquarters here in 1572 to soak and scrape hides beside the water. You'll hear why the district's houses were topped with open, vented galleries, and how a hospice built in 1503 for soldiers of Charles the Eighth gave the neighborhood its unlikely name. Stand at the water's edge and listen for what the guide asks you to imagine: the racket of paddles, grindstones and wet hides that once filled this now-quiet quarter.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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