Saint-Martin-Vésubie

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Saint-Martin-Vésubie
Coat of arms of Saint-Martin-Vésubie
Saint-Martin-Vésubie (France)
Saint-Martin-Vésubie
region Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur
Department Alpes-Maritimes
Arrondissement Nice
Canton Tourrette-Levens
Community association Nice Cote d'Azur
Coordinates 44 ° 4 ′  N , 7 ° 15 ′  E Coordinates: 44 ° 4 ′  N , 7 ° 15 ′  E
height 715-3,120 m
surface 97.13 km 2
Residents 1,411 (January 1, 2017)
Population density 15 inhabitants / km 2
Post Code 06450
INSEE code
Website www.saintmartinvesubie.fr

Place view

Saint-Martin-Vésubie is a commune of the department Alpes-Maritimes in the region Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur . It is assigned to the Arrondissement of Nice and the Canton of Tourrette-Levens . It is also a member of the Métropole Nice Côte d'Azur municipal association .

Before 1890 the community was called Saint-Martin-Lantosque .

geography

Saint-Martin-Vésubie is in the front left in the basin

The southern French mountain village with 1411 inhabitants (as of January 1, 2017) is the farthest settlement in the Vésubie valley. It lies on a glacial plateau of the Maritime Alps . Saint-Martin-Vésubie is located 40 kilometers north of Nice in a wooded area at the main entrance of the Mercantour National Park ( Parc national du Mercantour ) at the confluence of the alpine torrents Fenestre in the east and Boréon in the west, which form the source of the Vésubie . The village shares its northern municipal boundary with the Italian mountain town of Entracque in Piedmont .

The municipal area is very large with almost 100 square kilometers and also includes the hamlets of Le Boréon (with its reservoir of the same name ), Les Clots , La Madone de Fenestre and La Trinité .

history

middle Ages

Saint-Martin-Vésubie is first mentioned in the 12th century under the name of Saint-Martin-Lantosque and grows around a priory founded by the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Dalmas de Pedona (Italian: Borgo San Dalmazzo ). The Templars administered the sanctuary of Fenestre ( Sanctuaire de Fenestre ) in the municipality of the same name until the French king and the Pope forcibly dissolved their order in 1312 .

After the death of Queen Joan I of Anjou in 1382, a war of succession broke out in Provence , with the result that Saint-Martin and the other parishes on the left of the Var River came under the sovereignty of the House of Savoy and the new masters of the newly created county of Nice were allocated. Apart from brief interruptions, Saint-Martin belonged to the Duchy of Savoy for the next few centuries.

The fortified city flourished in the late Middle Ages , as it was (like Sospel ) on the salt road that led over the Vallon de la Madone valley and the Col de Fenestre pass from Piedmont to the seaport of Nice. The administration of the city then exercised a so-called consulate . From the 15th century, the Gubernatis family, who were involved in the salt trade, gained more and more influence. Nicolas de Gubernatis is said to have been the richest man in town at the time. On January 25, 1470, a fire broke out in Saint-Martin, which destroyed much of the city. The damage - including the loss of textile factories and warehouses - was put at 160,000 guilders .

Modern times

In 1684 Jérôme-Marcel de Gubernatis was awarded the fiefdom of Saint-Martin, but the resistance of the local population against the new ruler was so strong that this occupation was reversed that same year.

Jérôme-Marcel de Gubernatis was born in Sospel in 1633 to Donat de Gubernatis and Anne-Marie Vivaldi. The scion of a wealthy family was in Bologna jurisprudence study and a doctorate to the doctor for law and literature. He later became a member of the Accademia dell'Arcadia . In 1655 he became a podium and ordinary judge in Nice. In 1656 he married Lucrèce Marie von Ventimiglia . In 1661 he became a senator from Nice. The Duke of Savoy made him Knight of the Order of St. Mauritius and Lazarus defeated. In 1682 he became President of the Senate of Nice before he was appointed as ambassador to the courts of Lisbon , Madrid and London by the Savoyard Duke Viktor Amadeus II . Because of his merits, he received the fief of Saint-Martin from the Duke in 1684. When he was not wanted there, he became Commandeur de Saint-Gervais of Sospel in the same year , and Viktor Amadeus II made him Count of Bonson in 1688 . In 1713 he was made a knight of the Order of the " Maltese and Jerusalem" and in the same year he was appointed Grand Chancellor of Savoy. On October 5, 1713, Jérôme-Marcel de Gubernatis died as a man who, as a commoner, had the honor of having risen to the nobility of Nice.

Recent history

In 1860 the French emperor supported Napoleon III. the Savoyard ruler Viktor Emanuel in his endeavors to be crowned King of Italy . In return for the aid provided, the newly crowned king ceded not only Savoy but also the county of Nice to France. In this exchange, Saint-Martin lost part of its municipality ( La Madone de Fenestre ) to Italy. It was not until the Paris Peace Conference of 1946 that France was awarded the hamlet alongside the municipalities of Tende and La Brigue, and the municipality of Saint-Martin was complete again. The municipality name Saint-Martin-Vésubie (previously Saint-Martin-Lantosque ) has been in effect since 1890 .

Saint-Martin-Vésubie was the second city in France, after La Roche-sur-Foron , to receive electric street lighting (1893).

Refuge for persecuted Jews in World War II

During the Second World War , the Alpes-Maritimes was occupied by the 4th Italian Army on November 11, 1942. The Italian army command in Nice, headed by Marshal Ugo Cavallero and General Mario Vercellino , was not specifically anti-Semitic and with the toleration of the administration deployed in the occupation zone, the region became a refuge for thousands of French Jews . The refugees received a minimum of security and an official residence permit. In March 1943 they were brought from the coast inland to Saint-Martin-Vésubie. The commitment of the Jewish-French banker Angelo Donati, who had already fled to Nice, and the Capuchin Père Marie-Benoît saved several thousand Jews in the rest of France from German persecution. But with the Armistice of Cassibile on September 3, 1943, Italy withdrew from the war and the Jews in the region were again exposed to direct threats from the German administration. About a thousand Jews from Saint-Martin-Vésubie managed to escape along the old salt road across the Alps to Piedmont in Italy . Those Jews who remained in Saint-Martin-Vésubie were arrested only a few days later and deported to Auschwitz .

The sergeant major of Saint-Martin-Vésubie, Landry Mangon, and his wife Adrienne Mangon hid the fifteen-month-old boy Jean-Claude Dreymann from the henchmen, and the gendarme Joseph Fougere and his wife Yvonne Fougere in turn withdrew his five-year-old sister Cécile from the reach of the police Germans by pretending to be their own daughter. The two children were hidden at the local gendarmerie for months; her Jewish mother - eight months pregnant - managed to escape the raid on September 8, 1943. On the occasion of the commemoration of September 5, 2010 in Saint-Martin-Vésubie, the two gendarmes and their wives were awarded the honorary title of “ Righteous Among the Nationspostmortem .

coat of arms

Blazon : an azure blue Florentine lily supported by a double wave of the same color in the angled shield base on silver ; in the corner head on azure blue three gold stars in an unusual position.

Population development

year 1962 1968 1975 1982 1990 1999 2009 2012
Residents 963 1,047 1,188 1,156 1,041 1,098 1,325 1,345

Attractions

See also: List of Monuments historiques in Saint-Martin-Vésubie

Churches

The Church of the Assumption of Our Lady ( Église Notre-Dame-Assomption ) was built by the Knights Templar in the 12th century and rebuilt in the Baroque style in 1694 . It has several altarpieces , including a four-part winged altar from the school of Ludovico Brea, dating back to 1510. The rosary altar dates from 1697. It has the shape of a sacrament house and is crowned with two carved angels. John the Baptist watches over all of this . In the center of the altar is a monumental, colorful wooden sculpture, a portrait of Mary with the baby Jesus.

The building has been a French cultural monument since 1997 .

The Chapel of the " Mercy of Mary " ( Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-la-Miséricorde ) was originally the meeting place for the Pénitents Noirs (black penitents). The chapel with a bell gable dates from the 15th century and served temporarily as a parish church after the great fire in 1470. The baroque interior dates from the 17th century. On the walls there are large paintings with the following subjects : the Holy Family , offering in the temple , Lazarus with Peter and finally the Madonna of Fenestre (dated 1655). The building has been a French cultural monument since 1997.

The Holy Cross chapel Chapelle Sainte-Croix was the meeting place of the brotherhood Pénitents Blancs (White Penitents). It dates from the late 17th century and has an onion dome . The facade is decorated with sculptures by Giovanni Parini dating from 1847. The baroque furnishings , including the main altar and wall paintings, are remarkable . The building has been a French cultural monument since 1997.

More buildings

The residence of the Gubernatis family, called Maison des comtes de Gubernatis or Château Gubernatis , in the old alley rue du Dr-Cagnoli has been a French cultural monument since 1933. The Maison du coiffeur is also nearby . Of the four former city gates, only the Porte Sainte-Anne remains today . The town hall and the associated Place Félix Faure were inaugurated in 1863. During the Belle Époque , at the end of the 19th century, Saint-Martin-Vésubie was discovered as a spa and winter sports resort. Some pretty villas date from this period.

museum

The Musée des Traditions Vésubiennes has an exhibition area of ​​over 400 square meters. You can see u. a. the first power station in the city (Saint-Martin-Vésubie was electrified as the second town in France in 1893) and the old municipal mill from the 15th century.

hikes

Saint-Martin and the Vésubie Valley

The Sanctuaire de la Madone de Fenestre pilgrimage site is located at 1950 meters above sea level at the foot of the Col de Fenestre pass . Located in the heart of the Mercantour National Park , it is a popular starting point for hikes. The ascent to the top of the pass (2,474 meters above sea level), which forms the border with Italy, takes around an hour. When the view is clear, the view extends north to the Matterhorn , which towers over the Aosta Valley . The Madone de Fenestre sanctuary was originally a Benedictine abbey on an old Roman road . Later she was a commander of the Knights Templar before she was incorporated into the parish in the 16th century. Badly damaged by several fires over the centuries, it was restored in the 19th century. The interior is from the baroque era.

The hamlet of Le Boréon (1,500 meters above sea level) on the Lac du Boréon reservoir of the same name is the starting point for other interesting hikes. Not far from the last houses, a 40 meter high waterfall falls down a ravine. The ascent to the Col de Cerise ( Occitan Cirieigia , German: "Cherry Mountain ") takes two and a half hours . The summit at 2,543 meters above sea level forms the border with Italy.

See also

literature

  • Pierre-Robert Garino: La vallée de la Vésubie - Guide du visiteur. Serre éditeur, Nice 1998, ISBN 2-86410-287-0 , pp. 57-65.
  • Le Patrimoine des Communes des Alpes-Maritimes . Flohic Editions, Volume 2, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-84234-071-X , pp. 837-844.
  • Susan Zuccotti : Holocaust Odysseys: The Jews of Saint-Martin-Vésubie and Their Flight Through France and Italy . Yale University Press, New Haven 2007, ISBN 978-0-300-12294-7 .

Web links

Commons : Saint-Martin-Vésubie  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Édouard Baratier, Carte 45 - Les consulats de Provence et du Comtat (XII e –XIII e siècles). In: Atlas historique de la Provence , 1969.
  2. Famille De Gubernatis
  3. ^ François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon: Correspondancen de Fénelon. Vol. 9, p. 82 ff. Librairie Droz, Genève, 1987.
  4. ^ André Waksman (director): 1943 Le temps d'un répit. TV documentary, Italy / France, 2009. [1]
  5. This fact is also the subject of the novella Étoile errante by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio .
  6. Danielle Baudot Laksine: La Pierre des Juifs. Éditions de Bergier, Châteauneuf-Grasse, 2003.
  7. ^ The gendarmes who kept children out of Nazi hands
  8. Lucio Monaco: Borgo San Dalmazzo , translation: Corey Dimarco, in English
  9. Entry no. PA06000006 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  10. Entry no. PA06000004 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  11. Entry no. PA06000005 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
  12. Entry no. PA00080842 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)