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Dole, France

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A town of eastern France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Jura, 29 m. S.E. of Dijon on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 11,166. It occupies the slope of a hill overlooking the forest of Chaux, on the right bank of the Doubs, and of the canal from the Rhone to the Rhine which accompanies that river. The streets, which in general are steep and narrow,. contain many old houses recalling, in their architecture, the Spanish occupation of the town. The principal buildings are the church of Notre Dame, a Gothic structure of the 16th century; the college, once a Jesuit establishment, which contains the library and a museum of paintings and has a chapel of the Renaissance period; the Hotel-Dieu and hotel de ville, both 17thcentury buildings; and the law court occupying an old convent of the Cordeliers. In the courtyard of the hotel de ville there stands an old tower dating from the 15th century. The birth of Louis Pasteur (1822) in the town is commemorated by a monument, and there is also a monument to Jules Grevy. Dole is the seat of a sub-prefect and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce and a communal college. Metal-founding and the manufacture of fire-pumps, kitchen-ranges and other iron goods, chemical products, machinery, leather, liqueurs and pastry, are among the industries. There is a good trade in agricultural produce and live stock, and in wood, iron, coal and the stone of the vicinity. Wine is largely grown in the district.

Dole, the ancient Dola, was in Roman times the meeting place of several roads, and considerable remains have been found there; in the later middle ages and till 1648 it was the capital of Franche Comte and seat of a parlement and a university; but in the year 1479 the town was taken by the forces of Louis XI., and so completely sacked that only the house of Jean Vurry, as it is still called, and two other buildings were left standing. It subsequently came into the hands of Maximilian of Austria, and in 1530 was fortified by Charles V. In 1668 and 1674 it was captured by the French and lost its parlement and its university, both of which were transferred by Louis XIV. to Besancon.