Saline royale d'Arc-et-Senans

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About Saline royale d'Arc-et-Senans

The Saline Royale of Arc-et-Senans is a former salt factory built between 1775 and 1779, during the reign of Louis XVI, by the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, about 35 km from Besançon. At the time, salt was essential for preserving food and provided the crown with the gabelle tax. The brine came from the springs at Salins-les-Bains via a 21 km wooden channel and was boiled in large kettles, heated with firewood from the Forest of Chaux alongside.

Ledoux designed the saltworks as an ideal city: the buildings form a semicircle, with the director's house at the centre, flanked by the boiler buildings, and the workers' houses, offices and guardhouse on the curve, all facing the centre, like a place organised around work and surveillance. The entrance has a columned portico and a grotto carved into the stone, and on the walls of some buildings there are carved urns from which petrified brine drips.

The saltworks operated until 1895. Restored, it was declared a World Heritage site in 1982, and in 2009 the listing was extended to include the Grande Saline of Salins-les-Bains. Today it houses exhibitions on Ledoux's work, models of his imagined cities and the history of salt, as well as themed gardens that change each year.

In summer the gardens host a garden festival and cultural events.