Savoyard, French, then both… Single town, then double town… Pont-de-Beauvoisin owes its eventful history to its geographical location. Because in the middle flows a river… the guiers.

Declared a natural border between France and Savoy from 1355, it continues to separate the

Pont-de-Beauvoisin Savoy from Pont-de-Beauvoisin Isère.

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Pont-de-Beauvoisin was an important trading center from the 13th century: the city took advantage of the abandonment, for its own benefit, of the old Roman road linking Turin to Lyon via Aosta. Until the 18th century, salt, tobacco and silk also became the prerogative of smuggling, where the famous Mandrin became famous. In 1515, as part of the Italian wars, the construction by François 1er of a stone bridge between the French bank and the Savoyard bank of the city determined its vocation for wood craftsmanship. Italian carpenters accompanying the king on his return from war stopped at Pont-de-Beauvoisin, rich in forests and rivers, and trained Pontois carpenters in new techniques. In 1792, then 1860, with the annexation, then the attachment of Savoy to France, the strategic situation of the city is no longer so.

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The only outlet existing with the cultivation of tobacco, cabinetmaking developed and reached such a quality of production that it established Pont-de-Beauvoisin as "a city of furniture since François 1er". The rise of the Faubourg brings together, in small factories or units, most of the wood craftsmen. After  1950, the industrial furniture boom put an end to this great adventure. The museum of woodworking machinery and hand tools is a link between history and today's contemporary furniture.

 

You walk through the exhibition space as in a cabinetmaking workshop...