Besançon (, ; , ; archaic ; ) is a French city that serves as the capital of the department of Doubs in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. The city is located in Eastern France, close to the Jura Mountains and the border with Switzerland.
Capital of the historic and cultural region of Franche-Comté, Besançon is home to the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté regional council headquarters, and is an important administrative centre in the region. It is also the seat of one of the fifteen French ecclesiastical provinces and one of the two divisions of the French Army.
The city has a population of about 120,000, and is the centre of a metropolitan area of about 285,000 inhabitants, the second in the region in terms of population (after Dijon).
Established in a meander of the river Doubs, the city was already important during the Gallo-Roman era under the name of Vesontio, capital of the Sequani. Its geography and specific history turned it into a military stronghold, a garrison city, a political centre, and a religious capital.
Besançon is the historical capital of watchmaking in France. This has led it to become a centre for innovative companies in the fields of microtechnology, micromechanics, and biomedical engineering. Its university, founded in 1423, has an enrollment of nearly 30,000 students, including around 4,000 trainees from all over the world within its Centre for Applied Linguistics (CLA).
The greenest city in France,Considering surface green spaces per inhabitant, Numbers available on the encyclopedia site Quid, at the bottom of the page it enjoys a quality of life recognized in Europe. Thanks to its rich historical and cultural heritage and its unique architecture, Besançon has been labeled a "Town of Art and History" since 1986. Its fortifications, designed by Vauban, have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2008. The city has preserved numerous historical elements dating from Antiquity to the 19th century.
History
Toponymy The city is first recorded in 58 BC as Vesontio in Book I of Julius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico. The etymology of Vesontio is uncertain. The most common explanation is that the name is of Celtic origin, derived from wes, meaning 'mountain'. During the 4th century, the letter B took the place of the V, and the city name changed to Besontio or Bisontion and then underwent several transformations to become Besançon in 1243.
Ancient history
The city sits within an oxbow of the river Doubs (a tributary of the Saône); a mountain closes the fourth side. During the Bronze Age, c. 1500 BC, tribes of Gauls settled the oxbow.
From the 1st century BC through the modern era, the town had a significant military importance because the Alps rise abruptly to its immediate south, presenting a significant natural barrier.
The Arar (Saône) River formed part of the border between the Haedui and their hereditary rivals, the Sequani. According to Strabo, the cause of the conflict was commercial.Strabo, Geography 4.3.2 Each tribe claimed the Arar and the tolls on trade along it. The Sequani controlled access to the Rhine and had built an oppidum (a fortified town) at Vesontio to protect their interests. The Sequani defeated and massacred the Haedui at the Battle of Magetobriga, with the help of the Arverni tribe and the Germanic Suebi tribe under the Germanic king Ariovistus.
Julius Caesar, in his commentaries detailing his conquest of Gaul, describes Vesontio (possibly Latinized), as the largest town of the Sequani, a smaller Gaulic tribe, and mentions that a wooden palisade surrounded it. It appears as Vesontine in the Tabula Peutingeriana.
Over the centuries, the name permutated to become Besantio, Besontion, Bisanz in Middle High German, and gradually arrived at the modern French Besançon. The locals retain their ancient heritage referring to themselves as Bisontins (feminine: Bisontine).
It has been an archbishopric since the 4th century.
Middle Ages
In 843, the Treaty of Verdun divided up Charlemagne's empire. Besançon became part of Lotharingia, under the Duke of Burgundy.
As part of the Holy Roman Empire since 1034, the city became an archbishopric, and was designated the Free Imperial City of Besançon (an autonomous city-state under the Holy Roman Emperor) in 1184. In 1157, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa held the Diet of Besançon. There, Cardinal Orlando Bandinelli (the future Pope Alexander III, then adviser of Pope Adrian IV) openly asserted before the Emperor that the imperial dignity was a papal beneficium (in the more general sense of favour, not the strict feudal sense of fief), which incurred the wrath of the German princes. He would have fallen on the spot under the battle-axe of his lifelong foe, Otto of Wittelsbach, had Frederick not intervened. The Archbishops were elevated to Princes of the Holy Roman Empire in 1288. The close connection to the Empire is reflected in the city's coat of arms.
In 1290, after a century of fighting against the power of the archbishops, the Emperor granted Besançon its independence.
Renaissance In the 15th century, Besançon came under the influence of the dukes of Burgundy. After the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, the city was in effect a Habsburg fief. In 1519, King Charles I of Spain became Holy Roman Emperor (as Charles V). This made him master of the Franche-Comté and Besançon, a francophone imperial city. In 1526 the city obtained the right to mint coins, which it continued to strike until 1673. Nevertheless, all coins bore the name of Charles V.
When Charles V abdicated in 1555, he gave the Franche-Comté to his son, Philip II, King of Spain. Besançon remained a free imperial city under the protection of the King of Spain. In 1598, Philip II gave the province to his daughter on her marriage to an Austrian archduke. It remained formally a portion of the Empire until its cession at the peace of Westphalia in 1648. Spain regained control of Franche-Comté and the city lost its status as a free city. Then in 1667, Louis XIV claimed the province as a consequence of his marriage to Marie-Thérèse of Spain in the War of Devolution.
Louis conquered the city for the first time in 1668, but the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle returned it to Spain within a matter of months. While it was in French hands, the famed military engineer Vauban visited the city and drew up plans for its fortification. The Spaniards built the main centre point of the city's defences, "la Citadelle", siting it on Mont Saint-Étienne, which closes the neck of the oxbow that is the site of the original town. In their construction, the Spaniards followed Vauban's designs.
In 1674, French troops recaptured the city, which the Treaty of Nijmegen (1678) then awarded to France. At this time the city became the administrative centre for the Franche-Comté, with its own Parlement of Besançon, which replaced Dole.
As a result of control passing to France, Vauban returned to working on the citadel's fortifications, and those of the city. This process lasted until 1711, some 30 years, and the walls built then surround the city. Between the train station and the central city there is a complex moat system that now serves road traffic. Numerous forts, some of which date back to that time and that incorporate Vauban's designs elements sit on the six hills that surround the city: Fort de Trois Châtels, Fort Chaudanne, Fort du Petit Chaudanne, Fort Griffon, Fort des Justices, Fort de Beauregard and Fort de Brégille. The citadel itself has two dry moats, with an outer and inner court. In the evenings, the illuminated Citadelle stands above the city as a landmark and a testament to Vauban's genius as a military engineer.
Modern Europe In 1814, the Austrians invaded and bombarded the city. It also occupied an important position during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. In 1871, a project of Besançon Commune is engaged.
The Nazis occupied the citadel during World War II. Between 1940 and 1944, the Germans executed some one hundred French resistance fighters there. However, Besançon saw little action during the war. The allies bombed the railway complex in 1943, and the next year the Germans resisted the U.S. advance for four days.
Besançon was also the location, between 1940 and 1941, of an Internment Camp (Konzentrationslager), Frontstalag 142, also known as Caserne Vauban, which the Germans set up for 3–4,000 holders of British passports, all women and children. The conditions were harsh; many hundreds of internees died of pneumonia, diarrhea, food poisoning, dysentery, and frostbite.Shakespeare, Nicholas (2013) Priscilla: The Hidden Life of an Englishwoman in Wartime France. (Harvill Secker).
In 1959, the French Army turned the citadel over to the city of Besançon, which turned it into a museum.
The forts of Brégille and Beauregard sit across the Doubs from the city. In 1913, a private company built a funicular to the Brégille Heights. The funicular passed from private ownership to the SNCF, who finally closed it in 1987. The funicular's tracks, stations and even road signs remain in place to this day.
Geography
Location Besançon is located in the north-east quarter of France on the river Doubs. It is about east of the national capital of Paris, east of Dijon in Burgundy, northwest of Lausanne in Switzerland, and southwest of Belfort in Franche-Comté. It is located at the edge of the Jura Mountains.
Topography The city initially developed in a natural meander (or oxbow loop) of the river Doubs with a diameter of almost . The flat inner loop has an elevation of about , and is bounded to the south by a hill called Mont Saint-Étienne, which has a maximum height of . The city is surrounded by six other hills which range in elevation from : Brégille, Griffon, Planoise, Chaudanne, Montfaucon, and Montboucon. (There is a barge canal that cuts through rock under Mont Saint-Étienne, short-cutting the meander.)
Climate Besançon has an oceanic climate (Köppen: Cfb, Trewartha: Do), with cool to cold winters, warm summers, and frequent precipitation year-round. The year-round average is . The warmest month is July with an average temperature of , and the coldest is January, with an average temperature of . Besançon receives about of precipitation per year.
Religion see Christianity in Besançon and Islam in Besançon
Neighborhoods + The 14 Besançon boroughs La Boucle Velotte La Butte Battant Les Chaprais Bregille Saint-Ferjeux Montrapon Saint-Claude Palente Les Clairs-Soleils Planoise Les Tilleroyes Chailluz
La Boucle Battant Bregille Les Clairs-Soleils Velotte La Butte Les Chaprais Palente Les Tilleroyes Montrapon Planoise Saint-Claude Saint-Ferjeux Chailluz
Population As of 2022, the population of the City of Besançon was 120,057. It is the 34rd most populous city of France. Grand Besançon Métropole covers , 67 municipalities and has a population of 198,387. The metropolitan area covers , 308 municipalities and has 284,474 inhabitants. Its population increased by 4.9% between 2008 and 2020.
Government and politics
Until 2016, Besançon was the capital of the Franche-Comté administrative région of France, a région including the four départements of Doubs, Haute-Saône, Jura and Territoire de Belfort. Franche-Comté was since merged with the neighbouring region of Burgundy, and the "préfecture" was transferred to the city of Dijon. However, Besançon remains the seat of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté regional council and of various decentralised administrations such as the regional offices of the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) or the Centre régional des œuvres universitaires et scolaires (Crous).
Mayor of the City of Besançon is Ludovic Fagaut (LR).
Economy