page_title: Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans
section_title: The second plan
hierarchical_section_title: Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans / Claude Nicolas Ledoux / The second plan
context_page_description: The Saline Royale is a historical building at Arc-et-Senans in the department of Doubs, eastern France. It is next to the Forest of Chaux and about 35 kilometers from Besançon. The architect was Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, a prominent Parisian architect of the time. The work is an important example of an early Enlightenment project in which the architect based his design on a philosophy that favored arranging buildings according to a rational geometry and a hierarchical relation between the parts of the project.
  The Institut Claude-Nicolas Ledoux has taken on the task of conservator and is managing the site as a monument. UNESCO added the "Salines Royales" to its List of World Heritage Sites in 1982.
  Today, the site is mostly open to the public. It includes, in the building the coopers used, displays by the Ledoux Museum of other futuristic projects that were never built. Also, the salt production buildings house temporary exhibitions.
  The train line from Besançon to Bourg-en-Bresse passes just next to the salt works. The station for Arc-et-Senans is only a few dozen meters from the site.
context_section_description: Ledoux designed the semicircular complex to reflect a hierarchical organization of work. The complete plan included the building of an ideal city forming a perfect circle, like that of the sun. Louis XV had signed the edict authorizing the construction of the saltworks on 29 April 1773, and after approval of Ledoux' second design, construction began in 1775. The city was never started, however. All that was completed was the diameter and a semicircle of buildings of the saltworks.
  In the second design, the entrance building sits at the midpoint of the semicircle and contains on one side guardrooms and on the other a prison and a forge.  Other buildings on the semicircle include on the left, as one faces the entrance, quarters for carpenters and laborers, and on the right, marshals and coopers.  At the center of the circle is the house of the Director, which has a belvedere on top.  A monumental staircase led to a chapel that was destroyed by fire in 1918, following a lightning strike. On either side of the Director's house are the saltworks themselves. These two buildings are 80 meters long, 28 meters wide, and 20 meters high. They contain the drying ovens, the heating pots, the "Sales des Bosses", and the salt stores. At each intersection of the diameter and the semicircle sit buildings that housed the works' clerks. Behind the Director's house there is an elegant, small stables for the Director's horses.
  The support of salt works by a state monopoly probably explains why this building is so grand. The gabelle was very unpopular and was one of the complaints that led to the French Revolution. The Revolution itself probably curtailed the building of the ideal city.
caption: Aerial view of the proposed city at the Royal Saltworks at Arc-et-Senans by Claude Nicolas Ledoux, published in 1804
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