Stage 9Arc-et-Senans / Besançon

Arc-et-Senans

Located at the foot of the Jura mountains, between the Chaux forest and the river Loue, Arc-et-Senans is a small Comtoise village. In addition to agriculture, particularly focused on cattle and grain farming, and a small woodworking industry, the economic life of Arc-et-Senans is largely orientated towards tourism thanks to the Royal Saltworks which annually attracts 130,000 visitors. With its eleven buildings constructed in the shape of half-moon that housed the production lines and workers’ housing, the Royal Saltworks was borne of the fertile imagination of Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, visionary architect of the Enlightenment, and is a rare testament to the history of industrial architecture. Built at the request of King Louis XV, it was a factory for the production of salt that was transported from Salins-les-Bains, its point of extraction, and that were used at the time for the storing of food, the manufacture of glass and silverware, agriculture and medicine. Since 1982, the Royal Saltworks has been listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.