Pushing open the doors of a company and discovering behind the scenes of French manufacturing is what Le Routard offers. With Le Routard Company visit in France the famous collection of tourist guides published by Hachette Tourisme lists more than 450 companies still in business and open to visitors, from the most artisanal to the most industrial. These visits allow you to discover the know-how of the companies but also the industrial history which are part of the French culture.
Discover chalcography, bookbinding and typography workshops...
The companies selected in this book come from a wide variety of sectors.
In the graphic arts, Le Routard proposes a visit to the Moulding and Chalcography Workshop of the Réunion des musées nationaux, located in Seine Saint-Denis. This workshop preserves 13,000 engraved copper plates and 6,000 moulds of sculptures from the Louvre collection. These two collections allow the reproduction of works of art from the museums of France. Visitors will be able to discover intaglio printing and casting and patina techniques.
When you pass the Ile de Ré in Charente-Maritime, stop at the Atelier Quillet. Specialising in the restoration and binding of old documents, this workshop has retained a traditional manual know-how that includes some thirty different trades.
Le Routard also recommends a visit to the Atelier du livre d'art et de l'estampe de l'Imprimerie nationale located in Flers-en-Escrebieux in the North.
Created in 1640, this workshop has a typographic collection of 700,000 engraved pieces, most of which are classified as Historic Monuments, as well as a machine park that is unique in the world. Prints and art books by contemporary creators still come out of this temple of writing and printing.
At the Gascogne Papier Group's Felts Depland company in Saint-Junien in Haute-Vienne, you will discover the know-how of Europe's only manufacturer of wool felts and paper machine fabrics and non-woven fabrics.
...from the printing houses of the daily press headlines...
It is also possible to visit different printing works of the press. La Dépêche de Midi in Toulouse in Haute-Garonne offers a tour of the seven stages of daily newspaper production La Dépêche de Midi (from the editorial staff to the dispatch of the printed newspapers).
Near Lyon in Chassieu, visitors to the printing works of the Progress will be able to see how the presses print 20 newspapers per second!
The rotativist printing plant in Bordeaux in the Gironde also opens the doors of the workshop in which three web presses produce the newspaper South West .
But beware: for visits to these regional press printing works, you will have to follow the schedules of the machine operators, who only start running in the evening.
...or old-fashioned paper mills..
If you are interested in handmade papermaking, you can choose between three beautiful paper mills.
In Brousses-et-Villaret, in the Aude, discover the Brousses Paper Mill which uses cotton rags, cellulose from flax, hemp, esparto, rice straw and even cellulose extracted from horse dung.
In the Puy-de-Dôme in Ambert, the Moulin Richard de Bas awaits you. This mill has been open since 1326 and makes paper from linen and cotton.
In the Haute-Vienne at Saint-Léonard-de-Nobat, you can visit the Moulin du Got which produces, according to the know-how of the 15th century papermakers, pure linen, hemp and cotton paper for the fine arts and graphic arts.
Le Routard Visite d'entreprise en France contains all the information you need to prepare your visits. Its index allows you to find companies open to the public both by region and by sector of activity. In 2018, know-how tourism attracted more than 15 million people.
The Company Visit Le Routard collection, published by Hachette Tourisme published in December 2019, format 115 x 16 x 192 mm, 272 pages, 10 euros
