Saint-Dié-des-Vosges

Understand

thumb|La Meurthe at Saint-Dié-des-Vosges A major part was destroyed in November, 1944 and was rebuilt largely in a material imitating red sandstone.

After World War II, the right bank of the river Meurthe was completely razed and most people lived outside the town in wood cabins for decades. The radical plan created by Le Corbusier in 1945, which called for a large plaza with factories and other buildings in the heart of the city, was rejected in 1947, and only one private factory belonging to Jean-Jacques Duval was ever built. There were no means nor materials in this terrible period and the great street called "rue Thiers" was finished only at the end of 1954.

The river Meurthe flows in the Permian basin of Saint-Dié surrounded by wooded mountains Ormont, Kemberg and La Madeleine. The peaks of these mountains are 550 metres (1,800 feet) high, and are composed of Triassic formations, especially the so-called "Vosges sandstone", a kind of red sandstone.

Get in

Saint-Dié is 80 km (50 mi) southeast of Nancy and 45 km (28 mi) of Lunéville.

Get around

The urban transit bus network is called "Sylvia".

Do

The city has 220 km of marked hiking trails including the #533 long-distance hiking trail linking Moselle Lorraine to the Vosges counties. Le Chemin des Abbayes. Short railway cycle path that connects 3 abbeys, 8 km from Étival to Senones.