Saint-Gervais-les-Bains
| Saint-Gervais-les-Bains | ||
|---|---|---|
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| region | Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes | |
| Department | Haute-Savoie | |
| Arrondissement | Bonneville | |
| Canton | Le Mont-Blanc | |
| Community association | Pays du Mont-Blanc | |
| Coordinates | 45 ° 54 ' N , 6 ° 43' E | |
| height | 571-4,807 m | |
| surface | 63.63 km 2 | |
| Residents | 5,573 (January 1, 2017) | |
| Population density | 88 inhabitants / km 2 | |
| Post Code | 74170 | |
| INSEE code | 74236 | |
| Website | mairie.saintgervais.com | |
 Saint-Gervais-les-Bains |
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Saint-Gervais-les-Bains is a French commune in the department of Haute-Savoie in the region of Auvergne Rhône-Alpes . It is the capital of the canton of the same name, Le Mont-Blanc, and is located at the point where the Montjoie high valley with the Bonnant river flows into the Arve valley , between the cities of Chamonix and Geneva .
A substantial part of the Mont-Blanc massif is located in the municipality , which can be reached from Saint-Gervais via the Tramway du Mont-Blanc up to an altitude of 2386 m . The health resort of Saint-Gervais also has a thermal bath and is part of the Evasion Mont-Blanc winter sports area . As a result, the place is today mainly characterized by tourism.
geography
The center of Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains lies at 900 m in the Montjoie Valley on both sides of a gorge of the Bonnant river, a tributary of the Arve. The municipality also includes Saint-Nicolas de Véroce and part of the village of Le Fayet . Saint-Nicolas de Véroce is located up the valley and was an independent municipality until December 29, 1973. Le Fayet is located a few hundred meters below in the Arve valley and has a motorway connection and SNCF train station. Part of Le Fayet already belongs to the neighboring municipality of Passy . The entrance to the Montjoie Valley between Le Fayet and Saint-Gervais is characterized by a steep ascent of several hundred meters, while the high valley above Saint-Gervais only rises gently. On its flanks, the valley is strongly delimited by the Mont d'Arbois in the west and above all the Mont-Blanc massif on the east side. The tree line is around 2000 m and varies greatly both due to the rugged geography and human influences (alpine pastures, ski slopes).
The municipality of Saint-Gervais-Les-Bains also includes the summit area of Mont Blanc as an exclave in the municipality of Chamonix. The exact course of the state border between France and Italy on Mont-Blanc is not determined by international law and is the subject of a territorial dispute , i. In other words, there are different perspectives as to whether the entire summit region or just a French half separated by the summit belongs to Saint-Gervais and thus France.
The difference in altitude in the municipality of Saint-Gervais, from 580 m (Le Fayet) to 4807 m (summit of Mont Blanc), is unique among the municipalities of France.
Structure of the community
In addition to the actual town center and the aforementioned villages of Le Fayet and Saint-Nicolas, Saint-Gervais also includes numerous settlements and farms. Both the decentralized distribution of farmsteads, which existed in the Middle Ages, and the construction of holiday apartments in panoramic locations have contributed to the urban sprawl.
- The village of Le Fayet and the hamlets of Le Fayet d'en Haut , Le Freyney , Les Amerands , Champ-Long , Cupelin and La Cry are located in the Arve valley and on the flank of the Mont d'Arbois facing the Arve valley .
- Saint-Gervais , Les Praz , Bionnay and Le Gerdilot lie in the valley floor of the Montjoie Valley .
- Montivon , Bionnassay , La Gruvaz and Le Champel are on the Mont-Blanc flank of the Montjoie Valley .
- On the flank of Mont d'Arbois are Le Neyret , Le Vernay , Orsin , Le Golet , Le Bettex , La Combe , Les Plans , Saint-Nicolas de Véroce , Véroce and Les Houchettes .
Neighboring municipalities of Saint-Gervais-les-Bains are Passy , Les Contamines-Montjoie , Megève , Combloux , Demi-Quartier , Domancy , Les Houches and Chamonix as well as Courmayeur on the Italian side .
history
Origin of name
The place name is derived from the patron saint Gervasius of Milan . In Saint-Nicolas de Véroce, the first part of the name refers to Nicholas of Myra and the second is traced back to the green alder , which grows abundantly on the slopes of Mont d'Arbois. The name of the district Le Fayet means beech in the Franco-Provencal dialect language .
antiquity
The high valleys of Savoia have been populated at least since the Neolithic Age. In Roman times, the Celtic people of the Ceutrons inhabited the Montjoie Valley and were not conquered by the Romans until around AD 74. The border with the neighboring Allobrogern ran near Saint-Gervais.
middle Ages
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In the 10th century, two large parishes were established in the Montjoie Valley : Saint-Gervais and, further up the valley, Saint-Nicolas de Véroce. The latter originally included the entire upper Montjoie Valley. The founding of the parishes of Notre-Dame de la Gorge (14th century) and Les Contamines (18th century) reduced the expansion of Saint-Nicolas de Véroce to the current area.
In the Middle Ages, Saint-Gervais was part of the province of Faucigny . The Château des Contamines and several permanent houses secured the Montjoie Valley against the province of Savoy to the south . From the permanent houses in Saint-Gervais, La Hautetour and La Comtesse are still preserved. The inhabitants of the Montjoie Valley practiced mainly agriculture, and life in Saint-Gervais was organized decentrally in a dozen smaller hamlets , although the center of Saint-Gervais was not much larger than the surrounding hamlets. With the Treaty of Paris signed in 1355 , the Faucigny fell to the Counts of Savoy and the role of defending the borders of the Faucigny was eliminated. In the following years, Saint-Gervais gained importance as a trading center and from 1371 hosted one of the three most important fairs in the region, alongside Martigny in the Valais and Sembrancher in the Aosta Valley. The trade mainly concerned the exchange of regional products and the rearing of cattle (sheep and goats).
Baroque period
Since the 16th century, the population continued to increase without the food supply growing with it, and emigration began. The church buildings, carried out by architects from Valsesia and financially supported by some successful emigrants, date from this time .
The church of Saint-Gervais was built as an aisle church in 1698 . In 1792, a lightning bolt destroyed their bell tower, which could not be rebuilt until 1819. From 1726 to 1729 Saint-Nicolas de Véroce replaced his dilapidated church with a new baroque building. Its interior and facade were richly decorated in the decades that followed, including a classicist ceiling fresco from 1856. The church was completely renovated from 2003 to 2008 and damage to the works of art was removed. In the surrounding hamlets, some chapels are being built in the baroque style with their own altarpieces .
Modern times
Thermal bath
Saint-Gervais quickly took advantage of the discovery of a thermal spring in 1806 to set up a thermal bath . The thermal water emerges below the town center in the Bonnant gorge at a constant temperature of 32 ° C. It is heavily mineralized and contains trace elements , iron, sulfur, sodium and natural radioactive components. The healing properties of the spring are aimed primarily at people with ENT diseases, skin diseases or burns. Because of its thermal baths, Saint-Gervais is authorized to use the suffix -les-Bains (Eng. "Bad ..." ) and on April 7, 1867, changed its name to Saint-Gervais-les-Bains.
1892 disaster
On the night of July 12th to 13th, 1892, a previously undiscovered water bubble burst in the Tête-Rousse glacier with an estimated volume of 100,000 m³. The water and ice masses poured from the Bionnassay Gorge into the Bonnant, taking up large amounts of mud and debris and destroying parts of the hamlet of Bionnay. The center of Saint-Gervais was a safe distance above the Bonnant, but the mudslide swept the thermal baths at the bottom of the Bonnant Gorge with it. A total of at least 160 people were killed. Many were washed up into Lake Geneva.
The old thermal bath was rebuilt in the same place in 1892. The rebuilt Notre Dame du Torrent chapel now serves as a memorial. At the beginning of the 20th century attempts were made to avert the risk of this catastrophe happening again by building a drainage tunnel under the glacier. This measure did not succeed, however, and in 2008 soundings using current technology again showed the presence of a water bubble in the same glacier. The regular relief drilling in the glacier ice carried out from 2010 onwards reduces the water bubble to a harmless size.
Railway connection from 1898
The law of July 17, 1879 (Freycinet Plan) provided for the French railway network to be expanded in such a way that the development of less developed areas would also generate economic growth there. A railway line through the Arve valley was explicitly named in this law and was built in the following years.
- The La Roche-sur-Foron – Saint-Gervais line was completed in 1898 and is standard gauge. The Saint-Gervais train station is located at 581 m in the district of Le Fayet and is officially called Saint-Gervais-Le-Fayet . The Paris-Lyon-Méditerranée railway company (PLM, merged with the SNCF in 1938 ) operated this route.
- In Saint-Gervais-Le-Fayet, the railway line connects via Chamonix to Vallorcine , the section of which Saint-Gervais - Chamonix opened in 1901. It was also opened by PLM and is designed in meter gauge so that passengers have to change trains in Saint-Gervais. The route has some technical features. It was operated electrically from the start, with energy being fed in by means of hydroelectric power stations along the route and a conductor rail on the side of the track. Although the route has a steep gradient of up to 90 ‰, the track works on the principle of adhesion , i.e. H. without the use of racks.
- In 1908 the first section of the also meter-gauge Tramway du Mont-Blanc was opened, a mountain railway with rack and pinion drive according to the Strub system. It leads from Le Fayet train station to the center of Saint-Gervais and then further into the Mont-Blanc massif up to an altitude of 2386 m. Today's terminal station Nid d'Aigle (Eagle's Nest), 500 meters from the Bionnassay Glacier, opened on August 1, 1913 and was originally intended to be only a temporary solution. However, technical obstacles and the First World War prevented the rapid expansion of the line to even greater heights. The tramway was built and operated by a company founded specifically for this purpose, which merged in 1964 with today's Compagnie du Mont-Blanc , the operator of the lifts in the Chamonix valley.
Winter sports
Skiing as a popular sport began in Saint Gervais in 1936 with the construction of an aerial tramway in two sections, Saint-Gervais - Le Bettex - Mont d'Arbois (1833 m), by the Parisian system manufacturer Applevage . In the 1980s the aerial tramways were replaced and the passenger transport capacity of the systems increased significantly. Using the existing infrastructure, the Saint-Gervais - Le Bettex section received one of the first double cable gondolas in France. A 12- seater gondola lift was built on the second section in 1989 . Saint-Nicolas de Véroce has had its first ski lift since the winter of 1970, and in the following years the joint ski area with Saint-Gervais developed into its present form. His last major expansion was the development of Mont Joly in 1984. The gondola lifts are also operated in the summer months.
Tour de France
Saint-Gervais was two stages of the Tour de France .
- 1990 : The stage point was Le Bettex, the middle station of the gondola, and Thierry Claveyrolat won the Geneva - Saint-Gervais stage.
- 1992 : The stage point was Bionnay, on the road to Les Contamines , and the winner was Rolf Järmann .
Bypass 2012
The geography of the Montjoie valley means that visitors to the valley have to pass through the center of Saint-Gervais. This applies in particular to the connection to Les Contamines and to the access to the Saint-Gervais ski area, but one of the roads to the neighboring winter sports center Megève also leads through Saint-Gervais. Before the decision on a bypass road, more than 13,000 vehicles were regularly counted in each direction in the narrow center of Saint-Gervais on weekends and peak travel times, a situation that put a strain on the quality of life and its reputation as a health resort. Therefore, a new bridge was built over the Bonnant, which already directs traffic to the valley station of the Saint-Gervais - Le Bettex gondola and on to Megève before the town center.
Population and society
With 5573 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2017), Saint-Gervais is one of the medium-sized communes in the Haute-Savoie department. The population grew steadily in the 20th century.
| year | Residents |
|---|---|
| 1800 | 1 756 |
| 1901 | 2 022 |
| 1921 | 2 248 |
| 1936 | 2,775 |
| 1954 | 4 185 |
| 1962 | 4 011 |
| 1982 | 4,661 |
| 1990 | 5 124 |
| 1999 | 5 276 |
| 2006 | 5 594 |
| 2011 | 5 646 |
Town twinning
Economy and Infrastructure
In Saint-Gervais there are 1,013 companies registered (as of 2009), of which the majority (63%) belong to the service and trade sector. They are followed by the public sector (22%), the construction industry (9%), which is concentrated in the district of Le Fayet, and the manufacturing industry (6%). Unemployment in the municipality is 3.9% and is significantly lower than the average, especially for 15 to 24 year olds.
Between 1988 and 2000 there was a decrease in the number of farms from 81 to 50, which together still farm an area of 1149 hectares. Today the place lives mainly from tourism, which is aimed particularly at winter sports enthusiasts, hikers, mountaineers and spa guests. Saint-Gervais has 24 hotels (as of 2012) and 65% of the 7,988 residential units are registered as second homes or holiday homes.
Winter sports
The ski areas of Saint-Gervais and Saint-Nicolas de Véroce are interconnected and, together with the slopes of Megève, which connect to the rear of Mont d'Arbois, form a large contiguous ski area with a shared lift pass. This ski area is marketed as Evasion Mont-Blanc and also includes the areas Les Contamines-Hauteluce , La Giettaz and Combloux . The two ski areas in Saint-Gervais are owned by two separate joint-stock companies with a common board of directors. There is the Société des Téléportés Bettex Mont d'Arbois (STBMA) for the Saint-Gervais facing flank of Mont d'Arbois and the Société d'Equipement du Mont Joly (SEMJ) for the area between Saint-Nicolas and Mont Joly. They have net sales of 6.5 M € and 2.5 M € as well as EBITDA of 1.9 M € and 780,000 € (2010/2011). The young French ski jumper Marie Hoyau comes from St. Gervais.
Power plants
A multi-stage bypass power plant uses the Bonnant's water to generate energy. It was built in 1908 and its installed capacity increased to 18 MW during a major renovation in 1984. The main stage uses pressure lines to use a head of 177 m and has a maximum flow of 12 m³ / s.
traffic
Saint-Gervais can be reached directly by train or via the A40 motorway and is therefore very well connected in terms of transport. Geneva International Airport is around an hour's drive away. However, accessibility is again somewhat restricted by the location in a high valley, so there is only one direct access road to Saint-Gervais, and winter road conditions can make the connections between the individual hamlets somewhat more difficult. Tourism makes a significant contribution to the volume of traffic.
Streets
In Le Fayet, on the territory of the neighboring municipalities, there are two connections to the A40 motorway , which runs through the Arve valley and connects Lyon and Geneva with Chamonix and the Mont Blanc tunnel . There are exits 21 “Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, Passy-center” and 22 “Le Fayet: Passy-Le Fayet, Megève, Saint-Gervais-les-Bains”, the latter not being bidirectional and can only be driven from or in the direction of Chamonix. The départementale route D902 opens up the Montjoie Valley from Le Fayet and runs through Saint-Gervais. Another intermunicipal road branches off from Saint-Gervais on the D909 to Megève . The D43 (to Saint-Nicolas de Véroce) and D343 (serpentine road up to Le Bettex) run exclusively in the municipality.
railroad
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The Saint-Gervais-Le Fayet station is a junction between three different railway lines and is also located in the district of Le Fayet. The standard-gauge railway line La Roche-sur-Foron – Saint-Gervais ends here, and two different meter-gauge lines lead into the high valleys of the Arve. The railway line to Vallorcine follows the course of the Arve and guarantees access to the Chamonix valley.
The other meter-gauge route is the Tramway du Mont-Blanc mountain railway . It also branches off from Le Fayet and first serves the center of Saint-Gervais and several hamlets before ascending to the Nid d'Aigle viewpoint . Regional express ( ter ) to Annemasse or Chamonix typically run every two hours, which is increased to an hourly rate in high season or during rush hour. On Saturdays in the winter season, there is also a TGV that connects Paris from the Gare de Lyon with the winter sports resorts along the Arve valley.
education
In Saint-Gervais are:
- three kindergartens: 1 private ( Assomption Valmontjoie ) and 2 public ( Ecole maternelle Marie Paradis and Groupe scolaire du Fayet ).
- five primary schools: 1 privately run ( Assomption Valmontjoie ) and 4 public ( Ecole élémentaire Marie Paradis , Groupe scolaire du Fayet , école de Bionnay et école du Mont-Joly ).
- a secondary private school ( Assomption Valmontjoie ) in the center of the village.
Personalities
- Jeannie Longo (* 1958), racing cyclist
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ website of the Association Solé Pétuis , accessed on September 19, 2012
-
^ Article by the Association Culture, Histoire et Patrimoine de Passy , accessed on September 19, 2012, and the
associated entry as a cultural monument at the Ministère de la Culture - ↑ Mairie de Saint-Gervais, Réhabilitaton et remise en valeur de l'Eglise de Saint-Nicolas de Véroce 2003–2008 (PDF; 797 kB) ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link became automatic used and not yet tested. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Press release.
- ↑ La Catastrophe de Saint-Gervais (12-13 July 1892) - Gloubik Sciences. Retrieved November 18, 2017 (French).
- ↑ La Catastrophe de Saint-Gervais: Théorie de l'accident - Global Sciences. Retrieved November 18, 2017 (French).
- ↑ La Catastrophe de Saint-Gervais - Gloubik Sciences. Retrieved November 18, 2017 (French).
- ↑ a b Riddle of the Mountains (1/4) . In: Phoenix . January 12, 2014, 8:15 a.m.
- ↑ a b Gianna-Carina Grün: Gigantic water bubble could burst Alpine glaciers. In: time online . September 11, 2012, accessed September 16, 2012.
- ↑ Three-dimensional magnetic resonance imaging for groundwater - New Journal of Physics 13 (2011) 025022 (17pp); doi : 10.1088 / 1367-2630 / 13/2/025022 .
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from April 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://www.saintgervais.com/fr/la-ville/les-grands-projets/pont.html ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Dossier statistique zu Saint-Gervais from INSEE , accessed in September 2012 from www.insee.fr
- ↑ http://www.societe.com/societe/societe-des-teleportes-bettex-mont-d-arbois-351484811.html and http://www.societe.com/societe/societe-d-equipement-du -mont-joly-320720444.html
- ↑ http://energie.edf.com/fichiers/fckeditor/Commun/En_Direct_Centrales/Hydraulique/Centres/Les_Alpes/vie_des_sites/documents/fiche_fayet_juin2010.pdf
