Grand-Rue: Strasbourg’s main shopping street

Grand-Rue, the town’s historic thoroughfare, follows the ancient Roman road that ran from Strasbourg all the way to Saverne. It was split in 2 in the 1920s during the Grande Percée, a rather ambitious urban modernization project at the end of the 19th century. Let’s set the scene. 1870 France loses the war against Prussia, and Strasbourg becomes the capital of the region. The Prussians wanted to turn it into the model city of the future, except that at the time, Strasbourg had doubled in size and was still quite medieval. It was like a large-scale Petite France. Winding streets, poverty, filth and suffocating humidity. It was also a time when people understood the importance of good hygiene! The government thus decided to undertake a major restructuring of the city center, rebuilding everything with a few basic rules, for example that buildings had to have windows and that there had to be one bed per inhabitant. Just the basics. And they raced forward, with no hesitation, destroying tons of houses and buildings, and evicting over 3,000 people. The locals were terrorized, but what came out of it was a beautiful, wide street, framed by elegant monuments and the epitome of modernity: a tramway!