The Great Tree
Some thirty metres from the high Vosges — Europe's tallest erected tree.
hesdes — CC BY 2.0 · olive.titus — CC BY 2.0 · Sjaak Kempe — CC BY 2.0 · Valentin R. from France — CC0
A Strasbourg general who took command of France's Egypt expedition after Napoleon slipped home, and was assassinated in Cairo in 1800. The city honours its soldier son, though the campaign itself is a bitter colonial chapter of Egyptian history — the statue is part of Europe's two-faced story with the East.
As a crossing and a coffee, yes; as a destination, no. It is downtown incarnate — meet there, shop from it, move on to what you came for. In December the equation flips and it becomes what you came for.
Raised in November, lit when the markets open near its end, standing till early January. The first lighting is a packed local event — ordinary evenings after are more than enough.
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Place Kléber is Strasbourg's beating heart: the city's largest square, its meeting point and the head of its shopping streets, named for the city's son General Kléber — commander of the Egypt campaign after Napoleon's departure — whose statue stands at centre with his remains beneath. The pink eighteenth-century Aubette building closes its north side with arcades, department stores ring the rest, and the tram skims one edge — making it the hinge you cross repeatedly between cathedral, Petite France and station. Its true glory is December: here rises the Great Christmas Tree — the tallest natural decorated tree put up in Europe, some thirty metres — surrounded by France's oldest Christmas markets, in a city that officially styles itself 'Capital of Christmas'.
Some thirty metres from the high Vosges — Europe's tallest erected tree.
The pink arcaded façade closing the square since the eighteenth century.
The Egypt campaign's commander standing over his own remains in his city.
Place Kléber, 67000 Strasbourg