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MOLSHEIM AND MUTZIG
Wine Road, Bugatti and World War in Alsace

One of the first stops along the Alsace Wine Road south from Strasbourg (see Route des Vins Alsace), the walled city of Molsheim dates from Roman times and expansion in the 14th century with its medieval stone walls, an ammunition storeroom and Blacksmith’s Gate remaining from the period, but much of Molsheim’s notable early history comes from the 1500-1600’s during the religious struggles between Catholics and Protestant reformers. Lutherans took firm hold in Strasbourg and monastic orders of Benedictines and Carthusians escaping to this nearby refuge, while later came Jesuits and Capucines.

One of the former monastery buildings in Molsheim now serves as museum to the town’s other claim to fame as the first home of the Bugatti automobile. The French Revolution brought industry to Molsheim alongside religion. Ettore Bugatti built his first cars in this small Alsacian community. The Bugatti Foundation, a museum dedicated to the car maker and his family is located in a priory building of a former Carthusian monastery, the Charterhouse with remaining cloisters and monk's cells, along with the Art and History Museum of Molsheim. The former Bugatti Factory is about a kilometer out of town, closed in 1956 and is now used to manufacture aeroplane brake parts. They have a few Bugattis on display at the Bugatti Foundation, though while documenting the car marque’s history the foundation is not really an auto museum. If you want to ogle more of the classic vintage cars, you can go to the automobile museum in Mulhouse to the south (see French National Auto Museum Alsace).

The Town Square of Molsheim is typical of a medieval period French Alsacian village, with a town fountain, a boulangerie for morning pastry and a beer garden style restaurant, with the most distinctive feature, the Metzig, or "Great Butcher's Shop", a Renaissance era building with double stairway, and clock figurines. If you're looking for a colorful wine country stay, there is really only one hotel on the center square in Molsheim, often fully booked. If you're not reserving ahead and find it is, a check of a listing at the tourism office will often show rooms available in the nearby village of Mutzig five minutes away, which has two quaint hotels on its own town square. One pleasant Bavarian style Bed & Breakfast directly on the square and the more Alsatian L'ours de Mutzig Hotel across the square. There are several wine vineyards for exploring around these two towns, and the less heard of Mutzig has its own special place in Europe’s turbulent political history.

A few kilometers outside of the town center in the low rolling hills at the edge of the Vosges Mountain is the curiously unique Kaiser Wilhelm II Fort de Mutzig. The history of Alsace is shaped by the back and forth struggle for empire between France and Germany (see Haut Konigsbourg). Up to World War I, Alsace was a possession of the German Empire. To protect his possession Kaiser Wilhem II built what, at the time in 1893, was the most technically advanced military fortification the world had seen. An underground bunker tunnel system connecting to mechanized artillery gun turrets with an electrified fence. A self contained fortress supporting up to 6,500 soldiers for defense of Strasbourg. The outcome of WWI made the modern fortress useless and obsolete, with France gaining the territory of Alsace to the Rhine River. France, of course, copied the idea and created the smaller versions of fortresses of the Maginot Line, except with the cannons and machine guns pointed in the opposite direction, also turning out just as useless in the next war (see Maginot Line). The Kaiser Wilhelm Fort of Mutzig is open on weekends from May and everyday from July to September. Group tours can be arranged all year. © Bargain Travel Europe

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Hotel Bugatti Molsheim

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Kaiser Wilhelm II Fort Mutzig
Alsace Wine Route

See Also:

ALSACE WINE ROAD AUBERGE INNS
Hotel Restaurants Near Haut Konigsbourg

SWEET TOOTH ON THE RUN
OO-so Delicious Strasbourg Cathedral

BLACK FOREST
More than Ham & Cuckoo Clocks

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