Mulhouse: France's automobile capital

The City of Automobile, which houses the Schlumpf collection, remains the world's largest automobile museum with over four hundred vintage vehicles.

A few steps away, the Church of Saint-Étienne, Neogothic, dominates the main square of the old city with its own polychrome stained glass windows.

Continuing, you visit the City of Train, French national railway museum that displays historic locomotives from the Nineteenth century to today.

Toward evening, the Mulhouse district animates Alsatian cuisine restaurants, halfway between French and German tradition.

The Schlumpf Collection, which forms the basis of the Cité de l'Automobile, was gathered in secret by two Swiss industrial brothers and discovered only following the collapse of their textile company in 1977, revealing one of the world's most valuable automobile collections, including rare royal Bugattis.

Mulhouse was an independent republic allied to the Swiss Confederation for over two centuries, before voluntarily choosing annexation to France only in 1798—a rare case of willing adherence in revolutionary times rather than forced imposition.