Nouvel Hotel, Chalon-sur-Saône, France 15th August 1990
Overnight at Chalon, the town a surprise and a delight. It’s the birthplace of Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833), widely credited with the invention of photography. He made his first ‘sun drawing’ in 1822 and his earliest surviving photograph dates from 1827. There are tributes to him around the town – his birthplace, where he studied, an avenue, a statue and a museum. The historic centre is a mellow mixture of grand buildings and informal courtyards, of timber framing and decorative ironwork and plaster, of high romantic towers and figures watching over street corners. There is a fine sweeping riverside vista along the Saône, hinting at the port Chalon once was. St. Vincent’s Cathedral, watches over the eponymous Place; it dates mainly from the 12th to the 15th Centuries, but has some elements from the 8th and a 19th Century neo-gothic façade. Chalon’s picturesqueness encourages photography.
The town was quiet, only the boulangeries seemed to be open; early risers strolled by carrying baguettes, one, twos, threes, whole arms full. Above the closed shops music, voices and canary song and the clatter of crockery drifted from open windows. It was Assumption Day, the celebration of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary; although a secular country, France has kept it as a public holiday. The cathedral bells summoned the faithful with a deep, resonant booming.
Chalon is twinned with St Helens.