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Burgundy Tourist Board
5, Avenue Garibaldi
21006 DIJON
Tel: 33 (0) 3 80 280 280

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An industrial culture

Aspects of Burgundy’s past importance as a supplier of essential materials. Paris, for example, would not have been the city of today without Burgundy.

The timber from the forests of Morvan was tied into rafts and ‘punted’ along the rivers Yonne and Seine to Paris.

 

Here it was used for heating during the bitterly cold winters and, it is no exaggeration to say that many of the population would have died without the timber from Morvan.

The importance of the annual trip to Paris is celebrated in Clamecy each May. Paris has another debt of gratitude to Burgundy. When Haussman replanned the Paris that we know today, the stone was quarried close to Auxerre and sent by barge to the capital.

Steel has been foundered in Le Creusot since the 19th century. The Schneider dynasty built the town into Europe’s biggest works at this time. Steel from Schneider is famous
throughout France.

Le Creusot, Château de la Verrerie
Le Creusot: Château de la Verrerie

In the south of the region are now disused coal mines. Not much interest for visitors you may ask. But, two of them have been opened for visits into the fascinating and dangerous life underground since the 19th century and up to comparatively recent times.

The names are different too. Not French but, Polish as these were the workers who came here for work. Their descendants remain. The names of these places? Very practical French... “La Machine” after the wheel house from which miners were lowered below ground, and also Blanzy.

Wherever you chose to go, there is something unusual, always something of interest, that is Burgundy.

Symbolism...

One of the world’s most famous structures was designed by a Burgundian.To provide the capital with its most famous symbol the city commissioned a certain Mr. Eiffel for his ideas.

credits : Burgundy Tourist Board

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