Grand Besançon Métropole

Besançon (UK: , US: , French: [bəzɑ̃sɔ̃] , Franco-Provençal: [bəzɑ̃ˈsɔ̃]; archaic German: Bisanz; Latin: Vesontio) is the prefecture of the department of Doubs in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté. The city is located in Eastern France, close to the Jura Mountains and the border with Switzerland. Capital of the historic and cultural region of Franche-Comté, Besançon is home to the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté regional council headquarters, and is an important administrative centre in the region. It is also the seat of one of the fifteen French ecclesiastical provinces and one of the two divisions of the French Army. In 2020 the city had a population of 118,258, in a metropolitan area of 281,610, the second in the region in terms of population. Established in a meander of the river Doubs, the city was already important during the Gallo-Roman era under the name of Vesontio, capital of the Sequani. Its geography and specific history turned it into a military stronghold, a garrison city, a political centre, and a religious capital. Besançon is the historical capital of watchmaking in France. This has led it to become a centre for innovative companies in the fields of microtechnology, micromechanics, and biomedical engineering. The University of Franche-Comté, founded in 1423, enrolls nearly 30,000 students each year, including around 4,000 trainees from all over the world within its Centre for Applied Linguistics (CLA). The greenest city in France, it enjoys a quality of life recognized in Europe. Thanks to its rich historical and cultural heritage and its unique architecture, Besançon has been labeled a "Town of Art and History" since 1986. Its fortifications, designed by Vauban, have been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2008.

The Musiques de Rues Festival (French: Musiques de Rues: Nouveau Territoire des Arts Sonores) is a festival of street music taking place in the city of Besançon, France, over four days around the first weekend of October. It was created in 2006 and is dedicated to various forms of street music such as brass bands, fanfares, world music, hip-hop block party, sound installations and machines... The first edition, held in 2006, welcomed in the streets, squares and parks of the city about 70,000 members of the audience who could see a multitude of music performances for free, and about 800 musicians. The Bollywood Brass Band (UK), Dee Nasty (France), Jaïpur Kawa Brass Band (India), and Hot 8 Brass Band (New Orleans) are some of the artists who performed during the 2006 session.

The Besançon International Music Festival (French: Festival de musique de Besançon Franche-Comté) is one of the oldest festivals of classical music that takes place in the city of Besançon, northeastern France, over two weeks from around the middle of September. It was created in 1948. It is particularly known for its International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors (Concours international de jeunes chefs d'orchestre) created in 1951, which is organized every two years and rewarded famous conductors such as Seiji Ozawa (1959), Michel Plasson (1962), Zdeněk Mácal (1965), Jesús López-Cobos (1968), Sylvain Cambreling (1974) or Yutaka Sado (1989), who began their international careers with its first prize. The Besançon festival is held in French.

The Kingdom of the Franks (Latin: Regnum Francorum), also known as the Frankish Kingdom, the Frankish Empire (Latin: Imperium Francorum) or Francia, was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Frankish Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties during the Early Middle Ages. Francia was among the last surviving Germanic kingdoms from the Migration Period era. The original core Frankish territories inside the former Western Roman Empire were close to the Rhine and Meuse rivers in the north, but Franks such as Chlodio and Childeric I expanded Frankish rule into what is now northern France. A single kingdom uniting all Franks was founded by Clovis I, the son of Childeric, who was crowned King of the Franks in 496. He founded the Merovingian dynasty, which was eventually replaced by the Carolingian dynasty. Under the nearly continuous campaigns of Pepin of Herstal, Charles Martel, Pepin the Short, Charlemagne, and Louis the Pious—father, son, grandson, great-grandson and great-great-grandson—the greatest expansion of the Frankish empire was secured by the early 9th century, and is by this point referred to as the Carolingian Empire. During the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties the Frankish realm was one large polity, generally subdivided into several smaller kingdoms ruled by different members of the ruling dynasties. These coordinated but also regularly came into conflict with each other. The old Frankish lands, for example, were initially contained within the kingdom of Austrasia, centred on the Rhine and Meuse, roughly corresponding to later Lower Lotharingia. The Gallo-Roman territory to its south and west was called Neustria. The exact borders and number of these subkingdoms varied over time, until a basic split between eastern and western domains became persistent. After various treaties and conflicts in the late-9th and early-10th centuries, West Francia continued as the medieval Kingdom of France, while East Francia and Lotharingia came under the control of the non-Frankish Ottonian dynasty, and became the core of the medieval Holy Roman Empire.

The flood of Doubs river was the biggest flooding in the history of the Doubs river (France); the water rose up to nearly 10 metres above the usual level, January 21, 1910. The principal departements affected were the département of Doubs, the département of Jura and also the département of Saône et Loire. At least one person was killed, and many others may have been killed because of this flood.

Battant is one of the oldest parts of Besançon, Doubs, France, and has been under architectural protection since 1964. It is situated on the right bank of the river Doubs, north of the ox-bow that encircles the center of the city. A bridge across the Doubs joins the two quarters Battant and La Boucle (The Oxbow), via the Vauban quay and Jouffroy d'Abbans Place. Today, Battant has become a popular district with a diverse population, numbering about 4,200 people. It is one of the more lively quarters of the city because of its numerous small shops, its nightlife, and its market. The quarter's name appears to have come from the Mouillère, a small brook also known as the fons batenti (river of the beater) because the water from the brook drove a cloth-beating device. The name came to be applied to a nearby street, and then by extension to the entire quarter. The inhabitants of Battant are known as Bousbots, which recalls the resistance that the grape growers of the district gave to the attempted seizure of the city by the Huguenots of Montbéliard on the night of 20–21 June 1575.

The église Sainte-Madeleine is a neoclassical 18th century hall church in the Battant district of Besançon, France, dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene. Antoine-Pierre II de Grammont, the archbishop of Besançon, had it built from 1746 to 1766 to plans by the architect Nicolas Nicole.

The Synagogue of Besançon is the principal Jewish place of worship in the city of Besançon, France. The building is located in the area of Battant, near the old center of the town. It was built in 1869 and was inaugurated on 18 November. Since 1984 the building has been listed as a historical monument. A Jewish community formed in Free Imperial City of Besançon in the 14th century, after the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of France, but was forced to leave shortly thereafter. It did not reform until shortly after the French Revolution. An Imperial Decree dated 22 May 1867 authorized the community to acquire land on the Quai Napoléon. The community then entrusted the local architect Pierre Marnotte with the commission to design a building "in the Moroccan style".

The University of Franche-Comté (UFC) is a pluridisciplinary public French university located in Besançon, Franche-Comté, with decentralized campuses in Belfort, Montbéliard, Vesoul and Lons-le-Saunier. It is a founding member of the community of universities and institutions University of Burgundy - Franche-Comté (COMUE UBFC), headquartered in Besançon and which federates universities and other higher learning institutes in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region. With 28 research labs, 667 PhD students and 788 research professors in 2016–2017, the University of Franche-Comté is well represented in the research community. It collaborates with many organizations (University Hospital of Besançon, CNRS, INSERM, CEA, etc.). It has about 29,000 students, including nearly a third of scholarship students and 12% of foreign students. Its Centre for Applied Linguistics (CLA) is one of the world's leading schools for teaching French as a foreign language and French linguistics.

The musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie (Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology) in the French city of Besançon is the oldest public museum in France. It was set up in 1694, nearly a century before the Louvre became a public museum. Reorganized from 1967 to 1970 by Louis Miquel, a pupil of Le Corbusier, the museum is again the subject of a total renovation and an enlargement from October 2015. Three years later, the completely renovated museum was inaugurated on November 16, 2018 in the presence of the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron, the Minister of Culture Franck Riester and the Mayor Jean-Louis Fousseret. Attendance is then on the rise with 105,459 visitors recorded at the end of 2019.

The Battle of Besançon (21 June 1575) was a sectarian conflict between the Protestants and Catholics in the French city of Besançon in the region of Franche-Comté. Prior to the battle, the Huguenots, accused of heresy, had been expelled from the city and fled to the County of Montbéliard and Switzerland; the outcasts formed an army and planned an attempt to retake Besançon and turn the city into a stronghold of the Protestant Reformation. By the time the armed Protestants had reached the city of Besançon however, their army had dwindled because of several mishaps. Nonetheless, the battle began and raged for several hours; the outcome was an overwhelming Catholic victory. The majority of the Protestant army managed to escape, but those who were captured were hanged as traitors. For over two centuries after the battle, Protestantism in Besançon was repressed.

The siege of Besançon took place from 25 April to 22 May 1674 during the Franco-Dutch War, when French forces nominally led by Louis XIV of France invaded Franche-Comté, then part of the Spanish Empire. Siege works were supervised by the duc d'Enghien, eldest son of le Grand Condé, and French military engineer Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. The defenders were commanded by Vaudémont but the town's isolated position meant they could only delay capture. The bulk of French casualties were caused by a botched assault, allegedly launched to impress Louis, before the garrison surrendered and were allowed free passage to the Spanish Netherlands. Under the 1678 Treaties of Nijmegen, the province was annexed by France and Besançon replaced Dole as the regional capital.