Theme Week Alsace – Sélestat

Wednesday, 25 November 2015 - 01:00 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination:
Category/Kategorie: General
Reading Time:  4 minutes

Place d'Armes © Ralph Hammann/cc-by-sa-3.0

Place d’Armes © Ralph Hammann/cc-by-sa-3.0

Sélestat is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in north-eastern France with a population of 19.400. Sélestat is located in central Alsace, 22 km (14 mi) north of Colmar and 47 km (29 mi) south of Strasbourg, on the left bank of the Ill River. Sélestat is near the Alsace wine route.

The city is one of the richest and most varied in terms of architecture among the smaller cities of Alsace. Most remarkable are the Romanesque St. Faith’s Church and the Gothic St. George’s Church, the Baroque clock tower (1618) and the neo-medieval water tower. Buildings like the town hall (1788), the railway station (1880s) and the synagogue (1890s), as well as several Renaissance and Baroque civil houses are similarly noteworthy. The Humanist Library displays one of the oldest and most homogeneous collections of medieval manuscripts and Renaissance books in Europe. Its core is the still almost intact library of Beatus Rhenanus, that had been bequeathed to the city and kept by it ever since. Sélestat is the cultural center of central Alsace and is the seat of the Fonds régional d’art contemporain Alsace (FRAC Alsace) (contemporary art in and of Alsace) and of the Pôle d’archéologie interdépartemental rhénan (PAIR) (archaeology of and in Alsace).

Tour de l’Horloge © Poudou99/cc-by-3.0 Saint-Georges church © Richieman Rue des Chevaliers © Ralph Hammann/cc-by-sa-3.0 Haut-Kœnigsbourg © Sir James/cc-by-sa-3.0 Abbaye de la Pommeraie, former abby now a hotel © flickr.com - Pieter Smits/cc-by-2.0 Place d'Armes © Ralph Hammann/cc-by-sa-3.0
<
>
Abbaye de la Pommeraie, former abby now a hotel © flickr.com - Pieter Smits/cc-by-2.0
Sélestat is a place of very early origin. It was a royal residence in Carolingian times and became a free town of the Holy Roman Empire in the 13th century. In the 15th century it was the seat of a celebrated academy, founded by the humanist Rodolphus Agricola, which contributed not a little to the revival of learning in this part of Germany; Erasmus of Rotterdam was one of its students. In 1634 the town came into the possession of France, and it was afterwards fortified by Vauban. It offered little resistance, however, to the Germans in 1870, and the fortifications have since been razed.

Just to the west of Sélestat stands the great castle of Haut-Kœnigsbourg, at an elevation of 2,475 feet (754 m). It was presented to the German Emperor William II by the town of Sélestat in 1899, and was completely restored in 1908. The site is first mentioned as bearing a castle in the 8th century. Today it is a major tourist site, attracting more than 500,000 visitors a year.

Here you can find the complete Overview of all Theme Weeks.

Read more on Sélestat, Sélestat Haut-Kœnigsbourg Tourism and Wikipedia Sélestat. Learn more about the use of photos. To inform you about latest news most of the city, town or tourism websites offer a newsletter service and/or operate Facebook pages/Twitter accounts. In addition more and more destinations, tourist organizations and cultural institutions offer Apps for your Smart Phone or Tablet, to provide you with a mobile tourist guide (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.




Recommended posts:

Share this post: (Please note data protection regulations before using buttons)

Greenwich Savings Bank Building in New York City

Greenwich Savings Bank Building in New York City

[caption id="attachment_235594" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © flickr.com - Eden, Janine and Jim/cc-by-sa-2.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Greenwich Savings Bank Building, also known as the Haier Building and 1356 Broadway, is an office building at 1352–1362 Broadway in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Constructed as the headquarters of the Greenwich Savings Bank from 1922 to 1924, it occupies a trapezoidal parcel bounded by 36th Street to the south, Sixth Avenue to the east, and Broadway to the west....

[ read more ]

Theme Week Djibouti - Obock

Theme Week Djibouti - Obock

[caption id="attachment_238198" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Luc Michel/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Obock (also Obok, Afar: Hayyú) is a small port town in Djibouti. It is located on the northern shore of the Gulf of Tadjoura, where it opens out into the Gulf of Aden. The town is home to an airstrip and has ferries to Djibouti City. The French form Obock derives from Arabic "Oboh", deformation of Oboki, a name given to the Wadi Dar'i in its middle part, upstream of its coastal delta. The fishing village...

[ read more ]

The museum ship Seute Deern

The museum ship Seute Deern

[caption id="attachment_203416" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Garitzko[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]The Seute Deern (Low German for Sweet Girl) - originally Elisabeth Bandi, later Bandi and Pieter Albrecht Koerts - is a wooden bark and restaurant ship in Bremerhaven. The ship was declared a cultural heritage in 2005 as part of the overall German Maritime Museum. On August 31, 2019 Seute Deern sank in the Old Port. In 1919, the ship was launched at the Gulfport shipyard in Mississippi as a four-masted gaff schooner Eli...

[ read more ]

Portrait: Carl Friedrich Gauss, the Prince of Mathematicians from Brunswick

Portrait: Carl Friedrich Gauss, the Prince of Mathematicians from Brunswick

[caption id="attachment_6607" align="aligncenter" width="460"] Oil painting of mathematician and philosopher Carl Friedrich Gauss by G. Biermann © Gauß-Gesellschaft Göttingen e.V. - Foto: A. Wittmann[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (* 30 April 1777 in Braunschweig - † 23 February 1855 in Göttingen) was a German mathematician and physical scientist who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, electrostatics, ast...

[ read more ]

Brickell City Centre in Miami

Brickell City Centre in Miami

[caption id="attachment_206257" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © B137[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Brickell City Centre is a $1.05 billion shopping and mixed-use project in Miami, Florida. When finished, it will span up to five blocks to the west of Brickell Avenue and to the south of the Miami River, in the Brickell district of Greater Downtown. It will be anchored by a 107,000 square-foot Saks Fifth Avenue, Cinemex, and Italian food hall. The project is located between 7th and 8th Streets on both sides of South Miami Avenue an...

[ read more ]

Huntington Beach, Surf City USA

Huntington Beach, Surf City USA

[caption id="attachment_150642" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Huntington Beach Pier © Mcclane2010/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Huntington Beach is a seaside city in Orange County in Southern California. The city is named after American businessman Henry E. Huntington. The population is at 200,000, making it the most populous beach city in Orange County. It is bordered by the Pacific Ocean on the southwest, by Seal Beach on the northwest, by Costa Mesa on the east, by Newport Beach on the southeast, by Westminster o...

[ read more ]

Theme Week Libya - Kufra oasis group

Theme Week Libya - Kufra oasis group

[caption id="attachment_168418" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Al Jawf © NASA[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Kufra is a basin and oasis group in the Kufra District of southeastern Cyrenaica in Libya. At the end of nineteenth century Kufra became the center and holy place of the Senussi order. It also played a minor role in the Western Desert Campaign of World War II. It is located in a particularly isolated area, not only because it is in the middle of the Sahara Desert but also because it is surrounded on three sides by depressio...

[ read more ]

Castaway Cay in the Bahamas

Castaway Cay in the Bahamas

[caption id="attachment_152623" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Flying Dutchman at Castaway Cay © EmbraerSkyPilot[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Castaway Cay is a private island in the Bahamas which serves as an exclusive port for the Disney Cruise Line ships Disney Wonder, Disney Magic, Disney Dream, and Disney Fantasy. It is located near Great Abaco Island, and was formerly known as Gorda Cay. It is owned in full by The Walt Disney Company, giving them substantial control over the experience of visitors to the island. A post offi...

[ read more ]

Cathedral City in California

Cathedral City in California

[caption id="attachment_233172" align="aligncenter" width="590"] © Patrick Pelster/cc-by-sa-3.0[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Cathedral City, colloquially known as "Cat City", is a desert resort city in Riverside County, California, United States, within the Colorado Desert's Coachella Valley. Situated between Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage, the city has the second largest population, after Indio, of the nine cities in the Coachella Valley. Its population was 51,493 at the 2020 census, a slight increase from 51,200 at the 2010 cens...

[ read more ]

Helsingborg in southern Sweden

Helsingborg in southern Sweden

[caption id="attachment_152826" align="aligncenter" width="590"] Dunkers Kulturhus © Jesper Olsson[/caption][responsivevoice_button voice="UK English Female" buttontext="Listen to this Post"]Helsingborg is a town and the seat of Helsingborg Municipality in Skåne County. It had 97,122 inhabitants in 2010. Helsingborg is the centre of an area in the Øresund region of about 320,000 inhabitants in north-west Scania, and is Sweden's closest point to Denmark, with the Danish city Helsingør clearly visible on the other side of the Øresund about 4 km to the west. Historic Helsingborg, wit...

[ read more ]

Return to TopReturn to Top
© flickr.com - Allan Engelhardt/cc-by-sa-2.0
Hatfield House in Hertfordshire

Hatfield House is a country house set in a large park, the Great Park, on the eastern side of the...

Hôtel de l'Europe © Rauenstein/cc-by-sa-2.5
Theme Week Alsace – Saint-Louis

Saint-Louis is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in north-eastern France. The inhabitants are called Ludoviciens.

Hotel del Coronado © Dirk Hansen/cc-by-sa-3.0
Coronado in California

Coronado, also known as Coronado Island, is an affluent resort city located in San Diego County, California, across (and helping...

Schließen