The Grand Est is a region of borders and wine, a territory that for centuries served as the dividing line and battlefield between France and the German states, from the Thirty Years’ War to the two world wars of the 20th century. Alsace, Lorraine and Champagne, three regions with distinct historical identities, have been united since 2016 into an administrative entity whose cultural and heritage wealth is among the richest in France.
Alsace offers one of the most photogenic landscapes in France: the Wine Route, its half-timbered villages adorned with geraniums, its storks and its ruined castles on the Vosges ridges create a picture-postcard scene that attracts millions of visitors every year. Haut-Koenigsbourg, rebuilt by Wilhelm II at the start of the 20th century in an imposing neo-medieval style, overlooks the Rhine plain and the German Black Forest from a height of 755 metres. Strasbourg, seat of the European Parliament, is the symbol of Franco-German reconciliation.
Lorraine, the land of Joan of Arc and the Dukes of Lorraine, is home to Nancy and its Place Stanislas, an 18th-century Baroque masterpiece listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Champagne, with its sparkling wine cellars stretching beneath the chalky hills of the Montagne de Reims, and Reims Cathedral, where twenty-six kings of France were crowned, completes this picture of a region whose history resonates as a synthesis of European history.