Beautiful Vichy, France
We had a lovely winter day trip with Gilles and Lucienne to Vichy, a beautiful small city not far from us, population ~28,000, that is synonymous with Belle Epoch architecture, thermal healing waters, Napoleon III, 1900’s decadence, and the unoccupied southern French government that colluded with the Nazis in WWII.*
This blog doesn’t intend to cover all of this territory – so if you want the full version, you probably ought to Google it. I’m focusing on the famous Vichy thermal waters (Part One) and the gorgeous architecture of the Belle Epoch (Part Two).
PART ONE – The Waters
This is an important scene at the end of Casablanca ~ Louis realizes that the right thing to do is to join Rick and fight against the Vichy French government that is aligned with the Nazis. He pours himself a glass of water, realizes it’s “Vichy” water, and tosses the bottle into the trash can and kicks it away. I never noticed the significance of this before!
A LITTLE BACKGROUND – Vichy is the Queen of spa towns and was a favorite of Napoleon III during the ‘belle époque.’ It’s a gorgeous small city with fabulous parks and magnificent old houses. Think Savannah, Georgia – but centuries older and even prettier!
Vichy continues to be famous for the quality of the water and has numerous spa facilities for pampering and for medical treatments – with the medical treatments being government subsidized, by the way. YES! Your doctor can prescribe that you need to go to a spa, maybe for WEEKS, and the government will pay for it! (Back to those VERY HIGH TAXES and all that ‘free stuff!’ Oh, my back hurts now. Maybe I can get a prescription to go for a Vichy spa weekend….I’ll have to work on that! Haha!)
There were originally 12 Vichy natural springs, of which six remain available at the Halls des Sources, with the others having been closed or lost. Most of the springs are naturally warm and contain remarkable amounts of bicarbonate of sodium. The water has high concentrations of alkaline salts, magnesium carbonates, and calcium (AND a definite odor of sulfur!). The Vichy waters are believed to help cure digestive disorders, dermatitis, gout, and arthritis. At the spas and the Halls des Sources, you can drink it from fountains, sit in it in whirlpools, and swim in it in beautiful pools.
And it’s OLD! The Romans knew about and used the Vichy hot springs in previous centuries. The Celestine Monks (as in Celestine water) established a monastery here in 1410. Napoleon I’s mother – which would be Nap III’s great-grandmother? – came to the Vichy springs in 1799, and Napoleon I commissioned the Parc des Sources to be built in 1812. So although the city is greatly indebted to Napoleon I and Napoleon III for their vast investment in infrastructure, Vichy had already been famous for hundreds of years for its ‘healing waters.’
And there are differences in the water from the separate springs — some are available to you and me, as tourists, and some are only accessible if you have the doctor’s prescription! Complete discrimination, if you ask me.
And for you North American hydrophiles? The Vichy bottled water you can buy from Quicktrip when you get your gas is indeed actually from Vichy!
Fun Fact A young Coco Chanel worked at Vichy as a spa attendant handing people towels. It was here that she met the man that would finance her clothing and hat venture and began the enduring fashion house of Chanel.
Going for le spa? Be prepared to fork over some serious euros, unless you are a French-subsidized-citizen (which we are not!). There is a really fun description of the spa treatment here – https://www.colleenfriesen.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/TheBusinessofBeauty.pdf.
Next time, Part Deux and the drop-dead beautiful architecture!
Mindy
PS – I cannot write about Vichy, however, and ignore the fact that 75,000 Jewish PEOPLE disappeared in France during WWII, with the French Vichy government either looking away or participating. SEVENTY FIVE THOUSAND PEOPLE from this city – poof, evaporated. Hard to even mentally grasp and being here makes it all the more real. For as beautiful as the city is, there is also a dark permanent stain of the evil that was here.
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