Everything about Roanne totally explained
Roanne (
Rouana in
Arpitan) is a town and
commune in east-central
France in the
Loire département, about 90km north-west of
Lyon. It lies along the
Loire River.
Economy
Roanne is known for
gastronomy,
textiles,
agriculture and manufacturing
tanks.
History
The toponomy is
Gaulish,
Rod-Onna ("flowing water") which became
Rodumna, then
Rouhanne and
Roanne. The town was sited at a strategic point, the head of navigation on the
Loire, below its narrow gorges. As a trans-shipping point, its importance declined with the collapse of long-distance trade after the fourth century. In the twelfth century, the site passed to the comte du
Forez, under whose care it began to recover. An overland route led to
Lyon and the
Rhône, thus Roanne developed as a trans-shipping point between
Paris and the
Mediterranean in Early Modern France, where waterways were at least as important as roads.
The renewed navigation on the Loire encouraged the export of local products— wines, including casks of
Beaujolais that had been shipped overland, ceramics, textiles—and after 1785, coal from
Saint-Étienne, which had formerly been onloaded upstream at
Saint-Rambert, since river improvements at the beginning of the century. Sturdy goods were rafted downriver on
sapinières that were dismantled after use. Half the population of seventeenth and eighteenth-century Roanne depended in some way on this transportation economy: merchants and factors, carriers, carpenters and coopers, master-boatmen and their journeymen and oarsmen, and waterfront laborers (Braudel) p360f).
Roanne was one of the first towns served by railroad, with the opening,
15 March 1833, of the terminal on the right bank at the port of
Varennes of the third line, from
Andrézieux. Following came the opening of the
canal from Roanne to
Digoin (1838), which placed the city in the forefront of the French
Industrial Revolution.
In 1917 the arsenal was established at Roanne, and from 1940 a new industry developed, producing
rayon and other new fibers. In the post-industrial phase that set in during the 1970s, Roanne struggled to find new industry and attract tourism.!
Miscellaneous
Births
Roanne was the birthplace of:
Twin towns
Roanne is twinned with:
Nuneaton and Bedworth, United Kingdom
Guadalajara, Spain
Reutlingen, Germany
Montevarchi, Italy
Piatra Neamţ, Romania
Legnica, PolandFurther Information
Get more info on 'Roanne'.
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