Besançon

Gauls settled the loop of the Doubs around 1500 BC, and by the 1st century BC it held Vesontio, the largest town of the Sequani, described by Julius Caesar. Under Rome it became an important city, and the Porte Noire, a triumphal arch of the 2nd century, still stands. The town has been the seat of a bishop and then an archbishop since late antiquity, and the name gradually became Besançon by 1243.

In the Middle Ages Besançon belonged to the Holy Roman Empire: Frederick Barbarossa held a diet here in 1157, the city was made a free imperial city in 1184, and it later passed under the protection of the Dukes of Burgundy and then the Habsburgs. It remained a free imperial city under Spanish protection into the 17th century. Louis XIV conquered it in 1668 and again in 1674, and the Treaty of Nijmegen gave it to France in 1678. It became the capital of Franche-Comté, and Vauban spent some 30 years fortifying the citadel and the walls.

Watchmaking grew into its main industry, and Besançon became the French capital of the trade. During the Second World War the Germans occupied the citadel, where they executed around a hundred resistance fighters, and interned thousands of British women and children in the Caserne Vauban. The quartz crisis of the 1970s, symbolised by the workers' occupation of the Lip factory, hit the city hard. Vauban's fortifications were listed by UNESCO in 2008, and Besançon lost its regional prefecture to Dijon when the regions merged in 2016.

Besançon was the birthplace of Victor Hugo and of the Lumière brothers, and its house museum, statues and orchestra keep Hugo's name in view. Music runs deep: the International Music Festival, founded in 1948, is held every September, and the city also hosts the Détonation festival, an organ festival, jazz in June and period-instrument concerts. Les Souterraines, created here in 2006 as the Festival de Caves, stages performances in underground spaces.

The city has been a "Town of Art and History" since 1986. Its theatre by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, opened in 1784, was the first in the world with an orchestra pit, though fire destroyed the interior in 1958. The Fine Arts museum, founded in 1694, predates the Louvre by almost a century. Watchmaking remains part of the identity — from the cathedral's astronomical clock to the Art Deco National School of Watchmaking and the Lip brand.

Besançon has long been a religious and garrison city, and it is also diverse: a Protestant temple since 1842, a 19th-century synagogue and two mosques sit among its many Catholic churches. Its Centre for Applied Linguistics brings thousands of foreign students every year, and the Lip affair gave the city a lasting reputation on the left.

About 120,000 people lived in the city in 2022, about 198,000 in Grand Besançon Métropole and about 284,000 in the wider metropolitan area, the second in the region after Dijon. Besançon remains the seat of the regional council and many regional offices, one of the two divisions of the French Army is based here, and the university, founded in 1423, enrols tens of thousands of students.

The economy rebuilt itself after the collapse of watchmaking and artificial textiles. Watch firms survive in high-quality and customised niches, and the city has become a centre for microtechnology, micromechanics and biomedical engineering, showcased at the Micronora trade fair. It also has an unusual speciality in automatic ticket and parking machines.

Besançon is often called the greenest city in France, with about 204 square metres of green space per resident, and forests cover much of the commune. Residents walk and cycle the riverside promenades, take the tram that has run since 2014, and fill the old town on market days and festival evenings. The mayor is Ludovic Fagaut.

Besançon eats the food of the Franche-Comté uplands, and cheese comes first. Comté, a hard cheese of raw cow's milk matured over several months, leads the way; Morbier has a line of ash through its centre; Mont d'Or is a soft winter cheese sold in a spruce box; and cancoillotte is a runny cheese made from metton. The smoked saucisse de Morteau, a local sausage, comes from the town of Morteau in the Doubs uplands, linked to Besançon by a regional railway.

Wine comes from the Jura, which makes vin jaune, a sherry-like white aged under a veil of yeast, and sweet vin de paille, and Pontarlier, once known as France's absinthe capital, has revived the spirit since 2001. The hills around the city were once covered with vineyards, and a dozen cabordes, dry-stone vineyard huts, survive as a reminder.

Every September since 1995 the Gourmet Instants market on the Promenade Granvelle has showcased local products. The Café du Commerce, a 19th-century brasserie, keeps its rich Belle Époque interior, and the restaurants of the Grande Rue and Battant serve regional dishes alongside the cheeses.