The Doubs is the department of the mountainous Franche-Comté region, a landscape of limestone plateaus carved by the gorges of the Loue, the Dessoubre and the Doubs itself, before the river crosses the Swiss border to join the Rhine. This geography of the folded Jura front has shaped a distinctive defensive architecture, based on controlling the natural passes and passages between France and Switzerland.
Besançon, capital of the department and of Franche-Comté, is a citadel-city nestled within an almost closed bend of the Doubs, crowned by Vauban’s citadel—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—from its rocky promontory. Pontarlier, the gateway to Switzerland, is home to the ruins of the Château de Joux, where the Count of Mirabeau and the Haitian rebel Toussaint Louverture were imprisoned. Baume-les-Dames, Ornans, home of the painter Courbet, whose museum is housed in his birthplace on the banks of the Loue…
The watchmaking industry, inherited from the Swiss tradition and concentrated in the Montbéliard region, and the production of Comté, the queen of cheeses, whose 40-kilo wheels mature in high-altitude cheese dairies, are the two economic pillars of a department that has successfully combined tradition and innovation.