In our trip to France we have visited the beautiful royal saltworks of Arc-et-Senans, constructed from 1775 to 1779 under Louis XVI on the project of Claude Nicolas Ledoux, since 1771 Inspector General of the saltworks of the Jura, a Royal monopoly, and are the only ones built of the ideal cities planned by him for this industrial complex. It is the first work of the industrial architecture, inspired to the ideal of progress of the Enlightenment, built to permit a rational and hierarchical organization of the work. It was constructed to treat the salt deposits by evaporation: the saline water was brought here from Salins-les-Bains, 21 km away, and channelled by a system of double canalization composed of wooden cylinders and protected by control towers, manned by the Army. The water was evaporated in huge vats heated by fire with wood taken from the forest of Chaux. The buildings functioned until 1895. The city was organized around a factory whose buildings were layed out in a semi-circle around the Pavilion of the Director (with the stables behind it), flanked by two halls, the firing ateliers, where were the vats. The semi-circle was used for lodgings and workshops of the coopers, the blacksmiths, the workers and the ironsmiths, for the guards' building (the entrance) and for the buildings of the administration of the saltworks and of the administration fiscal. As its symmetrical counterpart, Ledoux had foreseen another semi-circle with a church, an exchange, a hospital, a market, public baths... The revolutionary architecture of the buildings, inspired to the Doric and Tuscan styles use geometric volumes with many inventions, like the ringed columns of the pavilion and of the overseers, a grotto with concretions that evoke melted salt...

I liked this site because of the quality and originality of its architecture. It's one of the most interesting industrial sites and it's worth to be visited if you are in the region of France County. It justifes the inscription also because there aren't many other industrial sites on the WHL, even if could be inscribed together with the nearby saltworks of Salins-les-Bains (currently on the Tentative List).

Photo: Arc-et-Senans - Pavilion of the Director and firing ateliers of the Royal Saltworks