I would soon learn that the cereal plain (wheat, colza, barley, rye) is indeed part and parcel of Auvergne. The current owners of the hotel, the Monier family, were formerly in the flour business. After nine generations as millers (Monier is a transformation of meunier, meaning miller) they sold the business to a large competitor and entered the hotel business with the purchase Chateau La Canière.

The term “chateau” covers a wide range of large residences in France and La Canière belongs more to the mansion than the castle portion of that spectrum, but like any respectable chateau it’s reached at the end of a long tree-lined alley.

Replacing a previous structure on this site, the chateau was built in the 1880s to showcase the instruments, portraits and library of the chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) that had been inherited by a member of the Bérard de Chazelles family, and presumably to hold elegant parties. Lavoisier is considered the father of modern chemistry and credited with naming oxygen and hydrogen and developing various theories about air, combustion and other matters that I started forgetting soon after taking the Chemistry AP exam in 12th grade.

To support his passion for scientific research, Lavoisier had a job in Paris with the tax farming office known as the fermier général in pre-Revolutionary France. His research and analysis made him famous, but having “worked for the man” noted on your resumé tends to get noticed in times of revolution. Lavoisier tried to keep his head low during the Revolution, but was nevertheless sent to the guillotine during the Terror along with his fellow tax farmers. In response to attempts to save his head for its scientific smarts, a member of the revolutionary tribunal is said to have declared, “The Republic doesn’t need scientists” (La République n’a pas besoin de savants).

Chateau La Canière fell into disrepair after the last owner of the Bérard de Chazelles family was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for her role in the Resistance and deported to Ravensbruk in 1944. Purchased by a Dutch group in 2006 and rehabilitated as a hotel and restaurant, the the project had barely taken off when the group sold it in 2010 to the Monier family. The Moniers have now upgraded La Canière to its current 5-star status.

La Canière is not as heavily staffed as a city 5-star, so employees are necessarily at your immediate beck and call. Nevertheless, the infrastructure of well-being is present. A gastronomic restaurant called Lavoisier occupies an outbuilding (to the right, above) that is partially a remnant, vastly transformed, of the chateau that preceded the current mansion. A 17th-century orangerie (citrus greenhouse) is found on the opposite side of the chateau. There’s also a swimming pool (open summer only) in the back. In addition to some handsome wood-paneled reception rooms, including one that serves as the breakfast room, the mansion/chateau has a chapel and, more interestingly, a cozy library where one can read, write and/or drink, day or night.

La Canière is now operated by two brothers, Pierre, 24, and André, 28, whose grandfather, Denys, who bears the title “manager,” can be seen puttering around the place. That sounds like a great set-up for a British sitcom, but the French are better at chateau-hotels than at sitcoms.

There are 26 rooms and suites of high comfort. Prices run 130-600€ depending on size, split into six categories, making the hotel accessible for moderate as well as higher budgets. The ground-floor rooms are spacious and wheelchair accessible, though I preferred the upper rooms, particularly the “traditional” rooms that recall (with mostly contemporary furniture) the style of what would have been the heyday of the private chateau here in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. My own airy room on the top floor had more contemporary character—lively carpet, its ceiling beams and its bathroom partially open to the room—and a clear view over the surrounding cereal fields. Craning my neck to the south I could see a milky view of the mountainous region of the Volcano Park and the peak of Puy de Dome visible on the horizon.

The Lavoisier collection was sold in 1925, including a famous portrait by Jacques-Louis David of the scientist and his wife, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. If I continue to speak of Lavoisier here it’s because he can’t be ignored. A copy of that portrait can be seen at La Canière along with other portraits of the chemist, reproduced ad nauseam throughout the hotel. Lavoisier is everywhere. The restaurant is named after him. Portraits, nearly always the same, line hallways and overlook beds. I was reminded of what Oscar Wilde, referring the wallpaper in his rundown hotel room in Paris, said as he lay dying, “One or the other of us has to go.”

Nevertheless, there were nice things to stay for.

Over a fine dinner in the hotel’s gastronomic restaurant, Pierre Monier, the young director, informed me that his family had actually removed a number of the Lavoisier portraits since purchasing the property and that I might only have been overwhelmed by those that remain because, unlike other clients, I took a complete tour of the hotel and its hallways. Most guests would only see a few. Be that as it may, and without suggesting that a traveler not come this way because of an overdose of Lavoisiers, they might consider removing a few more.

The pool, the restaurant, the lounge areas, the breakfast room, the atrium lobby, the library, the nearly 20 acres of lawn and wood, and the wifi undoubtedly make La Canière an attractive place to relax, reflect and romance or for a work retreat.

Château La Canière is about 10 miles from the hot springs/spa town of Chatel-Guyon by way of the Riom region. Though Riom is larger than Chatel-Guyon, it’s lesser known beyond the region. The director of the Riom tourist office was kind enough to meet me at the hotel to tell me about the treasures of the area such as the Renaissance buildings in the center of Riom and the cute neighboring villages of Mozac and Marsat.

As we shook hands to part I promised her that I would consider getting up at 6am to have a quick look at those Renaissance buildings and cute villages before heading into the volcanic landscape, but after a drink in the library, then a late dinner in the restaurant, then a long gaze up at the stars from my bedroom window, I looked long into Lavoisier’s eyes above my bed and admitted to myself that I had lied.

Château la Canière. Rue de la Croix Blanche, 63260 Thuret. Tel. 04 73 97 98 44. Member of Chateaux & Hotels Collection. The hotel is 2 miles outside the center of the village of Thuret. The Riom train station is 9 miles away.

Riom Tourist Office. 27 place de la Fédération, 63200 Riom. Tel. 04 73 38 59 45.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut (text and photos)

Continue to:
Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu.
Or return to:
Part I: From Paris to Clermont-Ferrand
Part II: An Introduction to Spa Towns and Hot Springs By Way of Royat
Part III: Chatel-Guyon

The post 5 Days in Auvergne, Part IV: Château La Canière, a Luxury Hotel appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Since most of my trip was dedicated to visiting old spa towns and hot springs, I wouldn’t be doing any hiking (despite my luck of a warm, sunny early spring week) or otherwise exploring the domes and craters that so define the landscape. The chain of puys begins at the western edge of Clermont. I wouldn’t be visiting Vulcania, a family-friendly museum and park explaining the existence, extinction and erosion of the volcanoes, the last of which erupted here about 7,000 years ago. Nevertheless, ever since arriving in Clermont-Ferrand and now throughout the day, I had views of the highest of the peaks, the 4806-foot Puy de Dôme, one of the major natural markers of France.

The roads that I drove along on the first hills of the Regional Nature Park of the Volcanoes were of the winding kind that would that make me feel ill as a passenger but that made me feel like a race car driver behind the wheel—at least until third gear. It was a short race. Twenty-five minutes after leaving Royat I was passing Volvic, famous for its bottled water, and the view of its 15th-century fortress castle (Tournoël), and 15 minutes beyond that I was descending into the narrow valley of Chatel-Guyon’s “thermal park,” where the hot springs are found.

Chatel-Guyon lies on the first bump out of the cereal plains of Auvergne, which is why a count named Guy II built his castle (castrum guidonis) there in 1185. Nothing remains of guy’s castle but it’s name, which is that of the town that grew around it.

Like the hiking season and the grazing season that awaited greener pastures, the season for medical thermal cures (April-October) was a week away as I traveled in Auvergne, so Chatel-Guyon was in a sunny slumber while awaiting the arrival, medical prescription in hand, of the first curists.

Today, a weekday, there was no competition for a seat on the patio of the restaurant of the town’s casino (in France, water-oriented resorts such as hot springs/spa towns are authorized to have a casino). I lunched there with Elisabeth Bertrand, director of the Chatel-Guyon tourist office. I faced out to the old thermal treatment center, les Grands Thermes (photo above), which closed in 2004, after nearly a century of use. The area didn’t seem abandoned, though in part it was, so much as waiting to be rediscovered.

Over chicken supreme, vegetables and a red Châteaugay Cotes d’Auvergne wine, an appellation produced nearby, Mrs. Bertrand explained to me of the rise and decline and transformation of the town over the past 150 years. The general outline follows that described in Part II of this series, with the following specifics:

– 1817: the beginning of timid developments of a small hot springs resort;

– 1855: arrival of the train at Riom, four miles away;

– 1858: opening of the first major thermal center below the old town of Chatel-Guyon in the narrow valley where hot water, having vaporized from deep down in the water table of the plain, pushes up to the surface;

– 1878: a doctor and a banker join forces, setting the tone for the marriage of medicine and luxury that puts Chatel-Guyon on the map of places to come for the thermal cure. During this period, the phylloxera insect was destroying vines throughout France; though not directly related, the rise of the economy of hot springs in the region coincides with the decline of revenue from the vineyards.

– 1890-1910: major developments including the construction, reconstruction and expansion of palatial hotels, the casino-theater complex, the central thermal center, and villas.

– 1912: Chatel-Guyon gets its own train station (now disaffected).

– 1919-1939: The good life continues between the wars, including the construction of another thermal bath and treatment center, the post office, and the Grand Hotel. The springs get additional medical certification particularly with new techniques to use the water to treat intestinal disorders;

– 1946-1970: With planes and more cars, increasingly mobile travelers are drawn to other vacation and resort destinations (the Riviera, foreign lands, etc.) while the medical use of hot springs here, as throughout France, becomes increasingly untethered from the notion of luxury, before losing any connection in the 1970s.

– 1970-2009: Taking the waters is no long associated with leisure and wealth but rather with the national health system’s willingness to provide for all or part of the costs of the 3-week cure. Among the clients sent to take the waters here in the 20th century are soldiers who were stationed in the French colonies and protectorates and sought treatment of intestinal disorders. By the 1960s those colonies and protectorates have gained independence from France, yet another element leading to the decline in the number of medical visitors at Chatel-Guyon from 22,000 in the late 1960s to 3500 in recent years.

What’s so special about this water?
The mineral content of the various hot springs throughout the Massif Central varies. Chatel-Guyon’s water is especially rich in magnesium, which makes it helpful in regulating intestinal transit, treat urinary problems, and healing intestinal wounds and inflammation. The presence of silicon leads it to be used for rheumatologic problems. Less important but also on the list of medical treatments for which doctors may prescribe taking the waters at Chatel-Guyon, is the presence of lithium along with the magnesium, which allows the mineral water to be prescribed for relieving stress, cramps and spasms.

To Americans and Brits, going to a designated faucet every morning for three weeks for a goblet of magnesium-heavy water or for a warm bath or other treatments may not sound very modern, or at least not influenced enough by the Japanese and Indian and Californian techniques that we now associate with spas, and some might prefer pills and other therapies, but there you have it, the Chatel-Guyon cure.

The more recent emphasis on the use of these springs for the treatment rheumatologic pain is expected to boost the number of medical visitors, according to Mrs. Bertrand, but the town isn’t betting the bank on its medical future alone. Instead, Chatel-Guyon’s growth, for this is not a town in decline but in growth, has (and presumably will) come from several other fronts.

– First, though Chatel-Guyon no longer has a direct train to Clermont-Ferrand (a train goes there from nearby Riom), this has become a bedroom community for those working in and around the regional capital. From 3500 residents in the 1970s, when most jobs were related to tourism and the hot springs, the town now as 6500 residents, even though it’s clear from the number and type of shops in town that many of those residents are spending their shopping money elsewhere. Still the numbers are enough to keep the schools and many services active.

– Second, as in all of these towns that developed thanks to their hot springs, there have been recent efforts to promote Chatel-Guyon as destination for that catch-all state of mind called “well-being” via contemporary spas. The 19th-century baths and treatment centers were always spas with a medical imprimatur, so the development of 21st-century spas emphasizing well-being rather than medicine makes good sense. For now the development of spas here and in the other hot spring towns that I visited on this trip are modest enough in size and investment that they’re largely for a local or sub-regional clientele, despite the occasional presence of a more distant visitor looking to enjoy two or three hours of soothing R&R. As far as the spas go, these aren’t international destinations, but as places to visit because of their history and architecture and natural landscape I find them fascinating for explorations off the beaten track.

– Third, more general tourism, particularly in summer, relative to their overall offering (hot springs, sports, nearby hiking, festivals).

Chatel-Guyon’s architectural heritage

A major sign of local efforts to project the town’s heritage into the future is the current renovation of the 400-seat Casino Theater through public funding and private donations. The theater, once one of the jewels of the Chateau-Guyon, was first completed in 1900 and then expanded in 1910. It’s due to reopen in 2014. Owned by the town, it is expected to earn itself a place on the festival circuit map in the region.

In discussing all this with Mrs. Bertrand, I remarked how different the role of government is in a town like this compared with a similar-sized town (or, likely, any town) in the United States. “For us,” she said, “inteventionism,” meaning the role of the government in the economic life of the town, “isn’t simply the government giving something away.” She spoke of it more in terms of making consensus decisions. “[Interventionism] has a relationship with our roots.” Americans would invariably see this as socialsm. Yet, as noted in Part II of this report, many old spa town lean right at the voting booth, though there’s no fast rule.

All of the spa towns that I visited on this trip were trying to answer the question as to what to do with their architectural heritage now that economic and cultural winds have blown away the original clients of that architecture. Chatel-Guyon, for instance, once had 70 hotels, including a number of luxury establishment. Currently, only 14 of those buildings operate as hotels, with the highest currently rated with three (out of five) stars (e.g. Splendid, Bellevue, Omental Thermalia).

Early in the 20th century, 28 springs were being exploited at Chatel-Guyon; in 1970, fourteen; now just five. You can see some of them, disaffected or closed off from the public, as you walk along the grounds of the thermal park. The luxury hotels of yesterday have been transformed into apartment buildings, their grand entrances, lobbies and ballrooms a bit forlorn without any doorman outside or fancily coiffed women walking with umbrellas on a sunny day. But I wouldn’t want this to sound like a sad portrait for this is indeed a healthy, living town. The valley of the hot springs and surrounding hotels/apartment buildings and villas makes for a pretty stroll.

The new thermal baths and treatment center of the 1980s, up the park from the casino, isn’t very attractive from the outside, but the old thermal center, the Grands Thermes, that I faced while having lunch is a treat for the historic-minded eye. Built 1904-1908, around the same time as other elements of the “thermal park,” as this part of the valley is called, the Grands Termes closed in 2004 and was purchased by the town five years later for a symbolic euro. There is as yet no consensus (i.e. viable project) as to what to do with it. However, its situation beside the casino and theater and its interior lobby are certainly promising.

The architectural heritage of these hot spring towns is part of what makes them so appealing to me. In the view above, taken from the entrance to the men’s wing of the Grands Thermes, you see the arched coffered ceiling, the red marble columns, the central table where those taking the cure would sit to write letters or to read the day’s paper, and the horseshoe staircase leading to the women’s wings. There are handsome details in the mosaic work throughout.

Unfortunately, the Grands Thermes can only be visited on Sundays from 4 to 7pm during the April-October “thermal cure” season. Once the theater has reopened in 2014 some bright and viable (or at least not too heavily subsidized) proposals will likely reach the mayor’s desk. The central space is simply too attractive to keep closed.

Coming up with a new use for the dozens of treatment rooms will be more difficult. Here’s a view of one of the treatment rooms with its ancient installations, in use until 2004.

A sunny walk-about in Chatel-Guyon eventually leads up the hill past several villas from the early 1900s, such at the villa “Les Jeannettes” (1908)…

… and to the site where Guy’s “chatel” once stood. There’s a milky late-afternoon light as I look out over the valley of the hot springs and beyond to the entrance to the volcanic park.

But I left Chatel-Guyon headed in the opposite direction, out into the plain, where Guy would watch for trouble and where I would spend an trouble-free night at the 5-star Chateau La Canière.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

Other articles in this “Five Days in Auvergne” series:
Part I: From Paris to Clermont-Ferrand
Part II: An Introduction to Spa Towns and Hot Springs By Way of Royat
Part IV: Chateau La Canière, a luxury hotel
Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu.

The post 5 Days in Auvergne: Part III, Chatel-Guyon appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I knew from experience that rental agencies in or near train stations and airports in France simply give you the keys, once you’ve signed the necessary forms, and send you on your merry way to hunt for the vehicle at the far end of the parking lot. And since one of those forms is an inevitably incorrect sheet indicating the agency’s version of pre-rental dents and scratches to your vehicle, your failure to re-inspect may come back to haunt you when you find yourself being asked to pay for someone else’s fender bender.

Having returned to the agency to correct the error, I then set off with a slightly scratched but correctly recorded compact and headed to Royat, the first hot springs/spa town on my list on this exploratory trip to Auvergne.

I assumed that Royat would be bucolically removed from the city, and my assumption had been reinforced by the fact that a tourist official had told me to give myself 30 minutes to reach Royat from the train station. She must have guessed, though, that I’d spend the first 20 minutes correcting the rental car scratch sheet though, because after only a 10-minute drive my GPS told me that I had arrived. But I didn’t appear to have arrived anywhere other than a slope on the edge of the city. It felt like being in Yonkers after leaving the Bronx, suburban yet still city.

Furthermore, my GPS, I discovered by the end of the day, would accept street names but not numbers, so it would abandon me at the start of a boulevard or avenue and leave me to rely on direct sighting to find my actual destination. My first destination, the Hotel Princesse Flore was indeed at the start of the avenue, but I went up and down the full length twice before feeling sufficiently confident behind the wheel on these narrow, winding streets to raise my eyes high enough to see “Princesse Flore” written on the side.

Timeline for hot spring towns in Auvergne

I’d come to visit this 5-star hotel and the adjacent spa and water park because they represent the latest step in the town’s economic evolution, an evolution that began nearly 200 years ago with the discovery of its hot springs.

Though not the case at Royat (aka Royat-Camalières), some hot springs in the region were already exploited during Gallo-Roman time (e.g. Le Mont Dore). Some supplied hot water and even heating to villagers in the Middle Ages (e.g. Chaudes-Aigues). And some were already attracting visitors in the 18th century (e.g. Chatel-Guyon).

For the most part, however, the development of these hot springs medical/leisure “resorts,” as we would now call them, largely occurred during the 19th century according to the following schema.

1. a trickle of visitors following the discovery of the spring (1822 at Royat);

2. the arrival of developers with a vision (1845 at Royat);

3. an increasing stream of visitors including some fashionable French or European aristocrats, who put the destination on the proverbial map (in 1862 the most notable of French aristocrats visited Royat: Emperor Napoleon III, who suffered from rheumatism, and Empress Eugenia, who suffered from his incurable philandering);

4. the construction from 1880 to 1913, the Belle Epoque period, of ever-grander hotels and villas and buildings with furnished rooms to rent;

5. a restyling, after WWI, of water towns and their installations for the evolving high-end curists (patients taking the cure), their entourage and other vacationers; at the same time, further studies were showing the medical benefits of the waters, whether through bathing, drinking and/or inhaling vapors (mostly for rheumatism at Royat);

6. an attempt to keep on a happy face after WWII despite increasing competition from beach resorts and jet vacations;

7. a fall from grace through the 1960s as thermal baths lost their luster and the state health system pays lesser fortuned visitors to come for a 3-week medical cure, and

8. an attempt since about 2000 for local government to encourage the arrival of medical curists while trying to find ways to develop other forms of tourism with or without the thermal baths themselves.

(There are no luxury resorts among the hot springs that I visit in this series, but that doesn’t mean that Auvergne can’t appeal to luxury travelers seeking rural pleasures.)

Royat, Princesse Flore, Royatonic

Royat itself was never a major spa town despite Napoleon III’s visit—the emperor showered most of his imperial thermal favors to Vichy—, but for a time it held its own. Its medically prescribed thermal facility still welcomes about 9000 “curists” per year with a prescription to take the waters for rheumatism and certain cardiovascular diseases.

The hotel across the street from Royat’s medical thermal center entered the scene at Phase 4 of the timeline above. Built in 1883, it was renovated in the 1920s, as can be seen from the Art Deco styling of the public areas, but fell into decline in the final decades of the century. It closed altogether in 1999 (another half-dozen hotels would close over the following decade), took a deep breath when it was purchased by its current owner, Isidore Fartaria, in 2001, and reopened in 2009 as Le Princesse Flore, named for the owner’s youngest daughter. It is now a 5-star hotel, which places it a couple of notches higher than any of the hotels in the Clermont-Ferrand.

As noted at Phases 6 and 7 above, the moneyed crowded increasingly turned away from hot springs such as these in the decades following WWII. Competition from more modern coastal or foreign resorts coincided with moves to include medical water therapy among those treatments to be covered partially or fully by the French public health system.

It was a double-edge sword. Medical coverage of taking the waters meant that certain thermal facilities would continue to function and perhaps flourish by attracting patients of the national health system, but it also led the well-to-do to spend their well-being funds elsewhere. After all, the latter were not about to hang out with the general and elderly population that could now enjoy (or suffer in) the same the hot springs thanks to a doctor’s prescription that meant that some or all of their expenses covered or reimbursed by the state system (le Sécu) and the rest by complementary insurance.

Several times during the course of my stay in the region I would be told that the Sécu killed the high life of the hot springs in France. While that’s somewhat true (as I’ve noted, coastal resorts and foreign resorts also played a role), the Sécu has also allowed helped these towns to survive.

But no spa town wants to live by Sécu alone. For all its positive effects on the well-being of citizens and long-term residents, doing so could a town into a socialist retirement home. (Interestingly, spa towns tend to vote rightward rather than leftward.) So in recent years Royat (pop. 4500) and other towns have sought ways of giving some economic umph to their aquatic heritage by coupling local or regional public investments with private investients.

The Princesse Flore, privately owned, and the adjacent spa and water park Royatonic, owned by the municipality, are a case in point.

As the top hotel in the immediate Clermont-Ferrand region, the Princesse Flore is primarily (at 85%, according its director) a business hotel. There’s no good reason for an upscale leisure traveler to stay here (might as well leave the urban environment altogether) unless transiting as a family through Clermont-Ferrand on an overnight. However, if I were a business traveler who’d just spent the day at one of those French meetings that end with everyone promising to think about the situation some more and to call each other in another week or two, or three or four because vacations are coming up, I wouldn’t mind coming home to this 43-room hotel. In addition to the visible comfort of the rooms and suites, guests have free access to the watery playground of Royatonic next door and can purchase some spa treatments there.

I did not stay the night since I had a chateau-hotel in the country to look forward to that evening. But I took the time to relax for 15 minutes on a hydro-massage bed (Hydro-Jet) in Royatonic’s peaceable Sanhoa-branded spa treatment area and then made the rounds of steam, baths (cold, warm, hot, scented) and basins of its water park. At Royatonic, the water springs from its source at 86F (30C) and his heated several degrees for the indoor pool and several degrees more for the outdoor pool, which is open year-round.

Royatonic is a public project (with plans for expansion), publicly funded and operated, that, according to its director, turns a profit. How it’s public investment and operation is actually calculated with respect to that profit I leave to French journalists to investigate, but the figure that I was given of 165,000 visitors for last year is indeed significant.

Royatonic is certainly a nice place for locals and for business travelers to gather and relax—except when there’s an underwater spin class going on and the music is pumped up in contradiction of the sign asking visitors to respect the calm.

The group was cycling to the tunes from “Grease”: “Grease lightning, go grease lightening…,” “Tell me more, tell me more, did you get very far…”

So much for relaxation.

Anyway, I’d come for research rather than zenitude, and I had a lunch appointment at Chatel-Guyon, the next spa town on my list.

So I plugged Chatel-Guyon into the GPS, with Anywhere for a street name, and drove into the hills.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

Hotel Princesse Flore, 5 place Allard, 63130 Royat. Tel. 04 73 35 63 63. Princesse Flore is the first French member of Best Western’s Premier association of hotels.

Royatonic and Spa SanHoa, 5 avenue Auguste Rouzard 63130 Royat. Tel. 04 73 29 58 90.

Return to Part I: From Paris to Clermont-Ferrand by clicking here.
Go to:  Part III: Chatel-Guyon.
Part IV: Chateau La Caniere, a luxury hotel.
Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu.

The post 5 Days in Auvergne: Part II, An Introduction to Spa Towns and Hot Springs By Way of Royat appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

I’ve set out from Paris on a 5-day trip to visit some of the region’s spa towns. It’s a 3½-hour ride by train to Clermont-Ferrand, the regional capital, with stops at the towns of Nevers, Moulins, Vichy and Riom/Chatel-Guyon. Of these towns only Vichy is likely to ring any bells outside of France, whether those bells call to mind water, beauty products, spas, war or some vague “I’ve heard of it.” My research into spa towns began several years ago in Vichy, resulting in the article and accompanying audio slideshow found here. That was followed up by a trip to Moulins and surroundings, during which I visited the old spa town of Bourbon-l’Archambault, mentioned in the context of a Tasted-Tested article found here.

Clermont-Ferrand isn’t a spa town itself but rather an industrial town strongly associated with the Michelin company, which is headquartered here. I’ll spend the night there then put up a rental car in the morning to visit some of the towns that are included on the Route of Spa Towns of the Massif Central, la Route des Villes d’Eaux du Massif Central, which covers 17 destinations. Villes d’eaux is literally translated as Water towns, a term that the speaks of the source rather than its use. Water resorts are another way to think of them.

From Clermont-Ferrand I’ll visit Royat, Châtel-Guyon, Mont Dore, Saint-Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues, and points in between, before spending a final day on the Aubrac Plateau, at the southern tip of Auvergne.

The Train to Clermont-Ferrand

Unlike the high-speed trains heading to more familiar destinations and quickly showing their affinity to wide landscapes, the train into the middle of France, due south of Paris, sets off on an old chug-chug line (as opposed to a newer TGV lines). It soon reveals the architecture of middle-class southern exurbs of the Paris: the stone-and-brick pavilions of the 19th century, the tile-roofed pale-stucco cookie-cutter homes of the 20th century, the strip malls and the industrial parks. After 20 minutes the train hits an unsteady stride that switches back and forth between a trot and a gallop over the next three hours.

Whatever one’s direction on leaving the capital on an inter-regional or international train, a shift in speed and landscapes occurs after 18 to 22 minutes. After another 10 minutes your thoughts are drawn forward and you are no longer leaving Paris but headed someplace else.

While I’ve made a few forays into Auvergne over the years, it still feels like a new destination to me. Prior to several years ago, my contact with Auvergne in Paris and elsewhere over the years had primarily come in the form of:
– numerous old-time cafes and bistros created by Auvergnats who immigrated to the capital in the first half of the 20th century;
– some friends and acquaintances who left Auvergne long ago;
– accounts of people who one went hiking there,
– and the folksy Ambassade d’Auvergne, a two-floor regional restaurant in Paris (located between the Pompidou Center and Arts et Métiers), where staples include the tasty calorie-bomb aligot, made of mashed potatoes, cheese (fresh cantal), cream and garlic, all pulled from a copper pot and typically accompanied with sausage, and the delicious gut-busting truffade, made of thinly sliced potatoes sautéed in duck or goose fat, covered with the same cheese and served with pork cold cuts.

Two hours out from Paris and just past the town of Nevers, on the southwest edge of Burgundy, the train enters Auvergne without any noticeable change viewed from the track. Small towns and villages are still comprised largely of stucco houses (ivory, pink, mustard, brown) with tiles roofs (orange, red, brown), occasionally an older farmhouse, a manor or a castle. The tracks cross rivers and canals. Out the window passengers who aren’t sleeping can pass green pastures, white cattle, newly plowed fields and bare woods. It’s late March, early spring. The bushes and trees along the tracks are barely in bud so there landscape is never screened from view.

The landscape is mostly flat, with an occasional mound. Past Moulins (2.5 hours) then Vichy (3 hours) the mounds lead to hills, followed by an eruption of higher hills and ridges in the near distance and the mountains of the Massif Central further off. Then the urban sprawl of Clermont-Ferrand reaches out to greet the train.

An Evening in Clermont-Ferrand

No one to my knowledge has ever accused Clermont-Ferrand of being quaint or charming or even beautiful. Nevertheless, by the end of the evening, I think it’s a shame that I’ve had only a few hours—and Sunday hours at that—to explore the historical center.

Though it can hopefully be the starting point for wonderful travels and discovery it is not a luxury destination in itself. Michelin, the only component of France’s CAC 40 (the French equivalent of the Dow Jones Index) whose headquarters aren’t in the Paris region, leads the economy of this city of 140,000 and its suburban region of 300,000, followed by pharmaceuticals (Merck-MSD, Théa) and some metallurgy and IT companies.

Clermont-Ferrand has the bad rap of a city to which people are sent on business as punishment. But I quite liked the architectural mishmash encountered on the zigzagging walk from the train station, through the old town and out the other side to my hotel.

I saw a handsome WWI memorial.

I visited the early 12th-century Romanesque church Notre-Dame du Port just as vespers was getting underway and briefly joined the faithful and the faint ocher walls in inhaling the incense.

I entered the city’s black lava stone Gothic cathedral as the faithful were gathering there.

Beside the cathedral, the cafes and brasseries on Place des Victoires were doing unhurried Sunday evening beer-time business, while a statue of Pope Urban II continued to preach the first Crusade as he did at the Council of Clermont in 1095.

I crossed Avenue des Etats-Unis, named for the United States on July 4, 1918, in honor of the anniversary of the Delaration of Independence and the American participation in The War to End All Wars. (There are also avenues honoring Great Britain, Italy and the Soviet Union.)

I checked in at the VolcanHotel, a comfortable standardized 2-star Inter-Hotel. My room (204) looks out to a stucco wall, orange roof tiles and a church spire–who can ask for more on a short overnight? I like a good 2-star at the start of a trip to a non-luxury-minded town. Besides, lodging will only get better on this 4-night trip, you wait and see.

Then I went out again to visit the vast Place de Jaude with its theater/opera house under restoration and its fountain-bordered walkway. There’s a monument to here by Vercingetorix, the Celtic warrior who led the federated fight against the Roman conquest and won a battle again Caesar’s legions, presumably around here, before definitely losing at Alesia, in Burgundy (presumably). The statue was designed by Bartholdi, who created the Statue of Liberty.

I thought I might have dinner at one of the establishments on Place de Jaude but the square, undoubtedly bustling during the week, was looking rather desolate at twilight on this Sunday evening.

So I returned to Place des Victoires, by the cathedral, and eventually entered Oustagou. I hesitated because it seemed too much of an Auvergne cliché. But who can resist starting off with cliché, like all my visitors to Paris who crave a croissant or a crepe as soon as we set out for a walk. Anyway, the choices this evening weren’t legion, so I allowed myself to be ushered to a side table, where I enjoyed lentil soup, aligot with sausage, and a glass of light red Saint-Pourcain wine from further north in Auvergne.

The meal was fine—aligot is a hearty must-try dish—soon after I took a seat began what is probably the worst 20 minutes of musical selection that I’d ever heard in a restaurant. Allow me to list what I accompanied by regional dinner:
1. Without You (as in: I can’t live if living is…)
2. All By Myself (as in: When I was young I never needed anyone… Don’t want to be…)
3. Dust In the Wind (as in: All we are is…)
4. Feelings (as in: Feelings…)

And not soft background or funked-up versions of these but actual original screaming “I can’t live if living is without you.”

Under normal circumstances this would be enough to make you want to jump off the steeple of the adjacent cathedral, but no one else seemed to notice, except for one woman of about my age who wistfully said to her dinner companion, “Memories, memories.” (She said that in French, “souvenirs, souvenirs,” which itself a French song that one should never have to sit through in a restaurant.) But these were not normal circumstances: I had arrived in Auvergne to visit spa towns.

Leaving the restaurant I looked up to the open-snouted gargoyles on the cathedral for advice on what to do next.

They told me to go to bed.

(c) 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

Go to Part II, An Introduction to Spa Town and Hot Springs By Way of Royat
Part III: Chatel-Guyon
Part IV: Chateau La Caniere, a luxury hotel
Part V: Mont Dore, Saint Nectaire, Chaudes-Aigues and Yu.

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The post 5 Days in Auvergne: Part I, from Paris to Clermont-Ferrand appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Where is Allier?: The department of Allier is in the center of France within the region of Auvergne. Specifically, my destination was an area within Allier known as Pays Bourbon or Le Bourbonnais. Le Bourbonnais was the feudal fiefdom of the Bourbon family whose descendants eventually became kings of France and Spain. Spanish King Juan Carlos I is a Bourbon as is Grand Duke of Luxembourg Henri I. The capital of Allier is Moulins, 2:23 by direct train from Paris. The Allier River runs through Moulins.

Amount of time: 2 days, 1 night, but would have liked an additional day to visit more wine producers and Charolais farmers.

Local products tasted, tested, enjoyed: Saint Pourcain wines, Charolais beef, several cheeses.

Notable sights in Le Bourbonnais

In Moulins:  National Center for Theatrical Costumes and Scenography (Centre National du Costume de Scène), offers some fabulous temporary exhibits for admirers of costumes, fashion and stage performance of all kinds; Mantin Mansion (Maison Mantin), restored home a wealthy man of the late 19th-century left more or less as it was, according to his will, plus the adjacent and Anne de Beaujeu Pavilion/Museum; Le Grand Café, an Art Nouveau café-brasserie whose 1899 décor is listed as a historical monument; a walk in the old town.

Romanesque-at-heart churches near Moulins:  The Priory Church of Souvigny (Eglise prieurale St-Pierre et St-Paul), contains the tombs of the Dukes of Bourbon and is the subject of a fascinating guided tour; Saint Menoux Church, Eglise Saint-Menoux, in the village of Saint Menoux, where legend has it that sticking one’s head in the saint’s tomb (it has a big hole in the side and yes you can) is said to render the simple-minded more intelligent.

Bourbon-l’Archambault: An old spa town with ruins of the feudal fortified castle of the Dukes of Bourbon. Rooms in two castle’s towers contain exhibits that about castle life in the Middle Ages; especially designed for children but informative for all. See restaurant noted below.

TASTED, TESTED

CHEESE

Gaperon, a cow cheese with garlic and a bit of pepper. Dome-shaped, with a natural white crust, medium soft (elasticky) inside, made from raw or pasteurized milk. Not strong to the smell but with a nice little (not overwhelming) peppered garlic kick to it. Traditionally cured by hanging from a string on a hook by a fireplace. The name gaperon comes from gape, meaning buttermilk in a local dialect, since buttermilk was originally added. Its origin is actually said to be in the area of Billom, Auvergne’s garlic capital, in the department of Puy-du-Dome which is just south of Allier. For that reason it’s pared with Cotes d’Auvergne red wines, which, like the reds of Saint Pourcain tested here, are made from gamay and pinot noir grapes.

Sept-Fons, a cow cheese made by Trappist monks in the Abbey of Notre Dame de Sept-Fons in Dompierre-sur-Bresbe.

Cérilly, a very fresh cow cheese preferably made with raw milk by the cheese producing company Déret et fils. There are different versions of Cérilly, from a fromage blanc version to slightly aged versions with a crust by way of the fresh, white, mild spreadable version that I enjoyed. (Déret et fils also produces a blue cheese called Bleu Bourbon.)

Sept-Fons and Cérilly stood out among the cheeses I tried while lunching in the small town of Boubon-l’Archembault at the Grand Hotel Montespan Talleyrand, 2-4 place des Thermes, 03160 Bourbon-l’Archambault. Tel 04 70 67 00 24. This Grand is a great old-fashion 3-star hotel and restaurant with vast rooms and Louis XIV-style décor. Both the hotel and restaurant are worth the detour to this small spa town.

BEEF
Charolais. My main aim for lunch at the Grand Hotel Montespan Talleyrand wasn’t actually to discover those cheeses but rather to try a thick marbled rump of Charolais beef, simply grilled.

White or cream-colored Charolais cattle dot the otherwise green landscape in much of the Bourbonnais and beyond. Charolais actually derives its name from the town of Charolles in southern Burgundy, just over the regional border from the department Allier, so Burgundians naturally claim the Charolais as one of its own. Charolais developed from a strong workaday bovine into an animal bred for beef in the late 18th century. In the 19th century its breeding zone spread, including to the Bourbonnais, which remains a central breeding ground for Charolais.

Charolais du Bourbonnais, as the Red Label beef produced in the area is called, must be traditionally raised traditional with calves feeding on its mother’s milk then 8-9 months of the year at pasture, moving to the stable from the end of November to March, where it’s fed hay, fodder, cereal and grain.  If interested in buying a couple of local Charolais to create your own herd, here’s where.  Sheep are also raised locally for Agneau du Boubonnais. For further information on both meats see the Bourbonnais meats site.

Charolais beef is tastiest and most tender when grilled on the outside, medium rare or rarer on the inside.

By the way, grilled beef is served in France as either bleu (meaning blue), with a quick flick of less than 30 seconds on the grill, saignant (meaning bloody) with up to a minute on the grill on either side, what we would consider as rare, and à point, which might appear medium rare to medium.  Bien cuit (meaning well done) would be anything beyond that, in which case the chef stops paying attention.

WINE
Saint Pourcain
Saint Pourcain—red, white and rosé—is among the lesser known appellations in France. For those unfamiliar with the geography of the center of France—I’m still shaky on it myself—it’s difficult to situate. It’s among a diverse grouping of wines from the Upper Loire region, which is far removed from the main body of Loire Valley vineyards. The closest major winegrowing regions are Burgundy and Beaujolais about 85 miles to the east. For those with a clearer sense of the geography of wine regions in France, the zone (and in some ways the taste) can be considered as being midway between Maconnais and Sancerre.

The production zone forms a long band along the Allier and Sioule Rivers covering a variety of soils. Part of that zone, the part that I visited, is located in the Bourbonnais.

Five main grape varietals can go into Saint Pourcain, the most area-specific being tressalier used in white wines here, along with chardonnay and sauvignon blanc. All Saint Pourcain whites must contain at least 20% of tressalier even though the predominant taste is with the chardonnay or the sauvignon. The reds and rosés are made from pinot noir and gamay, a reflection of the zones relative proximity to Burgundy for the former and Beaujolais for the latter.

Friends in Paris had served as an aperitif a nice white Saint Pourcain produced by the Laurent family a few days before this trip, but here I visited Domaine Gardien, operated by the Gardien brothers Olivier (left in photo) and Christophe (right). The domain consists of 21 hectares (52 acres) of vines in the northernmost area of the Saint Pourcain production zone. The soil of their vines is clay and flint, often with white pebbles on the topsoil.

Among the Gardien brothers’ whites I preferred those with the sauvignon left out, i.e. the 80% chardonnay/20% tressallier 2007 Réserve des Grands Jours, kept en lie and in oak barrels for 6 months, bottled two years after harvest.

There must be something to those percentages that appeal to me because it was the 80% pinot noir/20% gamay 2007 Réserve des Grands Jours that I preferred it among the reds. It’s a fairly hefty dark berry wine though not to be confused with substantial reds made further east. Earlier in the day I’d had the Secret de Jaligny, a 100% old vine pinot noir to accompany a Charolais. Though considered their top of the line I found it less notable, perhaps because I’d recently been to a Burgundy tasting and had a trip to Burgundy coming up a week later.

Saint Pourcain is largely unknown in the U.S. and the U.K. and the few bottles available there may not represent the variety of offerings available closer to the production zone. Even in Paris there are few references in wine shops. Of course, this isn’t a top French wine, in fact it’s relatively inexpensive (4-10 euros per bottle in France), but it is certainly a local attraction and, at its best, a welcome change at any dinner party.

For more on Saint Pourcain wines see the official site of the appellation.

WATER
Various bottled waters from that spring-happy Vichy basin which covers part of the Auvergne region were proposed in the restaurants where I ate during this two-day visit to the Bourbonnais. Chateldon, from just south of the area I was visiting, was my choice of the occasion because less well known (to me) and more chic than the others. Fine bubbles, a smooth and easy drink.  The town of Vichy with its famous brand-name waters for drinking and spa treatment is 34 miles (55km) south of Moulins.

© 2011, Gary Lee Kraut

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Vichy calls to mind first and foremost the provisional French government of the years 1940-1944 that collaborated with the Nazi Germany occupation of France. Or as an American I met upon returning to Paris from a two-day stay in the town Vichy put it, “Didn’t something bad happen there?”

Only rarely does Vichy evoke an actual, living town, one that even the French would be hard-pressed to find on a map. Yet come to Vichy (pop. 28,000) in the center of France, just under three hours by train from Paris, and you’ll soon have in mind not the waste and manipulation of war but rather the echo of one of the great pre-war spa towns of Europe.

Though now far from the European routes of high fashion or popular dreams and nearly lost in the beefy, little-visited mid-section of France that is the Auvergne region, Vichy still reveals in bold and hidden details the leisurely splendor of a spa town that was all the rage from the summer of 1861, when Napoleon III gave it his imperial stamp of approval, to the fall of 1939, when Europe geared up for war.

It was that thriving spa town and its then-modern facilities that incited the French government in 1940 to call this their temporary capital.

Blitzkrieg, Armistice, and the Occupation

During the German Blitzkrieg into northern France in the spring of 1940, the French government originally fled to Bordeaux from Paris. In June, France signed an armistice with Germany. With that, the country was formally divided into the Occupied Zone, which comprised northern France and the length of the Atlantic Coast, and the so-called Free Zone, which compromised the rest, with the exception of the southeast corner of the country which was occupied by Italy. Since Bordeaux was included within the Occupied Zone, the French government had to find a provisional capital within the borders of the Free Zone.

For a government in search of a home, Vichy in 1940 was a natural selection. It offered an ideal location in that it was situated within the Free Zone and in the center of the country. It offered an extensive modern infrastructure and communications system—by air, by rail, by telephone, as one would expect of a top-of-the-line resort town—and had nearly 250 hotels (compared with 30 today), many quite large, that could be requisitioned for government purposes.

The government arrived on July 2, 1940. The luxurious Hotel du Parc was selected as its headquarters. For the next four years, tens of thousands of year-round government workers would eventually replace the seasonal spa-goers.

A plaque inside Vichy’s opera house indicates that it was there that on July 10 the National Assembly voted full power to Field Marshal Philippe Pétain, thus ending France’s Third Republic.

It actually says it the other way around, stating that 80 members of the National Assembly (out of 649) voted to “affirm their attachment to the Republic, their love for freedom, and their faith in victory [over Germany].” Notice the way in which the small minority are applauded rather than the vast majority condemned. Either way, it was here that was created what became known as the Vichy Government.

Although the German army didn’t physically occupy the Free Zone, the French government collaborated with German powers in an echo of the latter’s policies in the north, particularly by allowing like-minded militia, supplying the Germans with forced labor, and interning Jews and dissidents, eventually handed over to the Germans.

As significant as that plaque is, one doesn’t come to Vichy to contemplate the war years. The Vichy of “Vichy France” and “the Vichy Government” is better understood elsewhere.

The Vichy of splendor, luxury, and well-being, on the other hand, is best understood by entering the theater where that vote took place. There you won’t find memories of war but rather the full radiance of one of the most stunning Art Nouveau theaters anywhere.

Indeed, visiting Vichy today doesn’t mean forgetting its association with a sullied wartime government but rather recognizing it and moving on—or back. That’s because the true interest of a 24-72-hour stay in Vichy is the architecture and the pleasure of walking around its small, languorous center with eyes wide open for details, or shut, perhaps, as you lounge in a warm, bubbling bath of spring water.

Napoleon III and the development of a major spa resort

Vichy’s town’s development over the past 150 years has left structures and details that reveal four major periods of architecture and urbanism: Napoleon III (1860s), Art Nouveau (1895-1903), Art Deco (1925-1935), Contemporary (since the late 1980s). Each period has modernized the infrastructure, technology, comfort, and architecture of the town.

It’s those details, and the general sense of well-being in this town, that can entice a traveler off the beaten track of major highways and high-speed train routes to spend a day or two or three in Vichy. Before taking the waters, however, let’s step back 150 years.

In the 1850s, Vichy was a small budding spa resort. Its hot springs attracted visitors as did others in the region that had been known since Roman times. Then in July 1861 Napoleon III, emperor of France from 1852 to 1870, come to visit. He came to find relief from his rheumatism, and by the time he left, feeling better, he signed a decree throwing his full imperial weight behind the town’s development, both for his own annual pleasure while taking the waters, i.e. la cure, and to create an economic rival to the great 19th-century spa towns to the east, such Baden-Baden in Germany. A town of leisure and luxury began to grow immediately.

Boosting Vichy’s place on the map in the 1860s naturally implied the construction of a new train station, now the town’s old station, which has been restored, and urban planning in the streets radiating from the train station to the hot springs, a distance of about a half-mile that is the commercial heart of the town.

A row of chalets on Boulevard des Etats-Unis (formerly Avenue Napoleon III), including the emperor’s home, also date from the Vichy’s imperial era. Among them, Chalet Eugenie was built for Napoleon III’s empress but she never stayed here. In fact, she spent only ten days in Vichy. Soon after arriving she discovered that her husband had also invited his mistress to Vichy and she promptly left the town, never to return. While Napeoleon III sojourned at Vichy each year from 1861 to 1865 for about 4 weeks in summer, then for ten days in 1866. Eugenia preferred to take the waters at Biarritz. He might have returned again in 1870 but he was kept away by the developing conflict with Prussia, which led to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War (July 19), and the fall of his regime (September 4). He was exiled to England, where he died in 1873 and is buried.

The entrance to the casino (photo above), now the convention center, is among the most emblematic of the architecture finery of Vichy because jutting out from its Napoleon III façade, a sign of its first golden age, is an airy Art Nouveau glass canopy added in 1900, a sign of its second.

Art Nouveau

The most stunning example of Art Nouveau, however, is the adjacent theater/opera house, mentioned above, inaugurated in 1902. The exterior, even cleaned, would get mixed reviews, but the ivory, yellow, and gold interior of the 1400-seat theater so exudes a sense of leisure and the leisure class that, show or no show, one could easily sit here for a couple of hours, without intermission, though perhaps a little nap.

Vichy is in fact a great place for a nap.  In fact, from the emptiness of the streets during my April visit I wonder if the Vichyssois spend much of the day, not to mention the evening, napping.

Vichy’s central park, Parc des Sources (park of the springs), lies between the Casino/Opera/Convention Center and the central building where medical spa-goers and non-medical visitors can come to drink a dose of Vichy water. Covered walkways border the triangular park leading between the two. The walkways are at a reminder of a time when taking the waters at Vichy required little more effort that strolling between the spa, the casino/opera, and a hotel bordering the park. Even today one can enjoy a stay in Vichy without venturing more than 500 yards in any direction from the Parc des Sources.

Only several of the rooms from the high luxury spa area as originally decorated in the former first-class spa complex circa 1903, the Thermes du Dome, the thermal baths of the dome, remain intact.

The Thermes du Dome had a men’s wing and a women’s wing, and each wing had at its far end two grand luxury suites consisting of a dunking pool, a bathroom, and a lounge room. We visited a suite in the men’s section with its old tub and dressing room surrounded by white tiled walls painted with beautiful Art Nouveau irises that only the crème of the crème of spa-goers got to see back in the day.

The central portion of the complex, beneath the dome, is open to the public, so visitors can freely see the wonderfully serene mural painting at the entrance to what used to be the women’s wing and what now mostly resembles an abandoned warehouse.

The Thermes du Dome are no longer in use as a spa, however the active spas are all nearby. As far as its water and spas go, Vichy is, for better or worse, a company town, with the Compagnie Fermière de Vichy, which has existed since Napoleon III’s time, holding the concession from the French state. The Compagnie Fermière has joined forces with the Accor Hotel Group to exploit the three main spas and their adjacent hotels in the center of town. The 3-star Novotel-Thermalia complex is just behind the Thermes du Dome and partially integrates another building from 1903. The 4-star Sofitel-Célestins complex is a few hundred yards away, while the 2-star Ibis-Callou complex nearby in the opposite direction.

Despite the Art Nouveau purity of some turn-of-the-century building in Vichy there was a lot of neo-whatever going on between 1880 and 1914, hence the playful variety of style of villas on the streets one and two blocks off the Parc des Sources. Boulevard de Russie, rue de Belgique, and rue Hubert Colombier are the best example of this.

Many of the great palace hotels of Vichy were built, transformed, or expanded during this period, the town’s second golden era. A sign of their respective times in a resort town, a racetrack was built in 1882 and, to please and draw British visitors, a golf course was created in 1908. The only palace still functioning as a hotel is the 4-star Aletti Palace Hotel (1908). Venture in whether staying there or not. (The others have been transformed into apartment or office buildings and, aside from the occasional glimpse of grandeur in the lobby, can only be visited from the outside. The best way to visit their interiors is with the coffee-table book Palaces et Grands Hôtels de Vichy by Jacques Cousseau (Editions de la Montmarie, 2007.)

A five-minute walk from the Parc des Sources, near Lake Allier, gurgles the spring known as the Source des Célestins. It’s freely open to the public and is the best place to fill your water bottle before enjoying a stroll along the lakeside promenade.

Art Deco

Contrasting with the arches, curves, and floral aesthetic of Art Nouveau, which flourished wherever money did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the streamlined grace of Art Deco developed in the 1920s and to the late 1930s, at which point aesthetics themselves were decimated in Europe. Vichy fully embraced the new style while leaving its older buildings intact.

Just as Vichy’s opera plays the tune of Art Nouveau, a sweet little 470-seat theater (now part of the Centre Culturel Valery Larbaud) several streets away opens the curtain to Art Deco. Among the most appealing Art Deco details in Vichy are here: three stained glass windows (Francis Chigot, 1926) representing Comedy, Music (or The Orchestra), and Tragedy, placed by the stairwell to the theater.

In the same theater here’s an image of bathing women that’s worth comparing with the Art Nouveau-era image of bathing women as seen above at the Thermes du Dome.

Eglise Saint Blaise , in the same quarter of the city, also takes Art Deco as its article of decorative faith.

Art Deco villas dot the town, mixed in with villas and hotels from earlier periods. Built on the same street as Napoleon III’s chalets, the Art Deco villa shown to the left served as the American embassy to France from 1940 to 1942. The street is named Boulevard des Etats-Unis (Boulevard of the United States), a name that it had prior to the war and managed to maintain despite the conflict. It’s strange to imagine that the U.S. had an embassy in Vichy, even once the U.S. and Germany were officially at war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Relations with the Vichy Government, never very direct in any case, degraded through 1942, until Vichy cut diplomatic relations with the U.S. in the fall of that year.

In the center of town there’s a plaque indicating that an American military hospital was set up there in 1918, to care for the wounded well away from the front of WWI. It is ridden with bullet holes, pot shots taken by French militiamen during WWII.

You want the dark side of Vichy, you can find it.

But the traveler comes away from Vichy not with a sense of its dark side, but rather of its easy, languid light: of imperial development, of Art Nouveau splendor, of Art Deco grace, of warm, soothing baths, long, slow promenades, and a pleasing sense of discovery.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

Further information

Though this article concerns the sights, spas and theaters of the heart of Vichy, it’s worth noting that the number one draw for visitors to Vichy is its installations for sports training, with national basketball, rugby, soccer, and fencing teams among those training at Vichy’s Parc Omnisports, on the opposite side of Lake Alliers from the center of town. A racetrack A racetrack and golf course also border the lake.

The development of the sporting industry in Vichy began in the late 1960s as a response to the dramatic decline in the town’s attraction as a resort destination. The jet set clearly preferred the Riviera. (From nearly 250 hotels in 1938 there are now about 30). Business meetings rank second as a draw for visitors, with the spa installations ranking only third. And few leisure travelers stop by for a simple discovery stroll of a day or two or three. Consider yourself privileged then if you do. The “season” per se is said to be April to October, but you may well have the place for yourself through most of April, May, and October.

– Inhabitants of the town of Vichy are the Vichyssois

Vichy Tourist Office: www.vichy-tourisme.com

Accor Hotels (see comments in article): www.destinationvichy.com

Aletti Palace Hotel (see comment in article), a Best Western affiliate: www.hotel-aletti.fr

For pastries and sweets:

Aux Marocains, a chocolate and candy shop established in 1870, 33 rue Georges Clemenceau. The shop’s colonial-era name is also that of caramels with a soft caramel interior and a harder caramel exterior that have been made here since at 1920.

Au Poussin Bleu, bakery and pastry shop, 15 rue Lucas.

Most of the shops, cafés, restaurants, and pastry shops gather within the half-mile between the train station and the Parc des Sources.

– Supporters of the Vichy Government were called Vichyistes

Diplomatic relations: For an official U.S. summary of French-American diplomatic relations since 1776, including the Vichy period, see this page history.state.gov/countries/france from the site of the U.S. Department of State.

La France Divisée (Divided France) is a video exploring collaboration and resistance in Vichy France as told in 2002 by survivors, historians, and a Resistance leader. Though not an in-depth exploration, the 36-minute video is a worthwhile teaching tool for teachers of both French and history, especially at the high school and freshman-sophomore college levels. It was produced and directed by Barbara Barnett and Ellen M. Angelini, teachers of French in the United States. See www.francedivided.com for more.

Other Vichys

A brand bottle of sparkling mineral water, of throat lozenges, and of beauty products.

A checkered (gingham) fabric, often used for a tablecloth

Vichyssoise, a cold leek-and-potato soup thickened with cream.

Vichy carrots, long-cooked in Vichy water. Add butter, parsley, perhaps a bit of sugar—et voilà.

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