Petite France: Little France

Let’s jump into the heart of the matter! The Strasbourg you had in mind. The postcard of the famous Petite France. But why Little France? The origin of the name is far less charming than the actual neighborhood. It all goes back to 1492. The date rings a bell, no doubt, since it’s the year that Christopher Columbus conquered the Americas. But the colonists didn’t just bring back gold, spices and coffee! They also brought with them a terrible epidemic that was mistakenly called the great pox. As the disease was unknown, it was named after the enemy. For the French, it was the Neapolitan disease, while in Strasbourg, it was the French Pox – Strasbourg wasn’t French back then, far from it! We are still two centuries off! So the French were the enemy, and syphilis took on the sweet name of ‘French disease’. It was decided to isolate the sick in the tanners’ district, a neighborhood that already didn’t exactly smell like roses, and to build them a hospice. It’s this hospice, known as the hospice for the pox-ridden, that the people of Strasbourg ironically nicknamed Little France, in reference to the so-called French disease. The rest is history; nicknames stick around, and so did this one! The entire neighborhood, today the picture-perfect image of Alsace, has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1988.