Limoges (in Occitan: Limòtges) is a commune in New Aquitaine located
in the Great South-West of France, prefecture of the department of
Haute-Vienne, capital of the historic province of Limousin, and chief
town of the former administrative region of the same name before 2016.
Founded ex nihilo around the year 10 BC by the Roman Empire as a new
capital for the Lémovices, under the name of Augustoritum, it became one
of the most important Gallo-Roman cities at that time. At the decline of
the Empire, in the Middle Ages, it took the name of the Celtic-Gallic
people who formed its region, Limousin; it is a large city, strongly
marked by the cultural influence of the Saint-Martial abbey, within the
duchy of Aquitaine whose dukes are invested and crowned in this city.
From the twelfth century, his enamels were exported throughout the
Christian world. In 1768, the discovery of a kaolin deposit in the
region of Saint-Yrieix-la-Perche allowed the development of the Limoges
porcelain industry which would make it world famous. The one that
remains attached to its ostensions, was nevertheless sometimes nicknamed
"the red city" or "the Rome of socialism" because of its tradition of
voting on the left and the workers' events that it experienced from the
19th to the beginning of the 20th century. .
Since the 1990s, the
city has also been associated with its basketball club, Limoges CSP,
several times French champion and European champion in 1993. It plays in
the first professional division and is still the club with one of the
most important French and European charts. The Limoges CSP brings the
city international renown through its European courses and the often
"warm" atmosphere of its mythical hall in the Beaublanc sports hall.
Due to its heritage policy, the city has had the “City of Art and
History” label since 2008.
Second most populated municipality in
the New Aquitaine region after Bordeaux, university town, third regional
by its importance after Poitiers but before Pau and La Rochelle,
administrative center and intermediate services equipped with all the
facilities of a regional metropolis, its area urban area brought
together 283,557 inhabitants in 2016, making it the sixth largest in the
Greater South-West after Toulouse, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Perpignan and
Bayonne and the 38th in France. Finally, the Limousin capital is the
28th most populated municipality in France.
A city with a
tradition of butchery, headquarters of one of the world leaders in
electrical equipment for buildings, it is also well positioned in the
luxury industry. Known and recognized as the "capital of the arts of
fire" due to the ever-present establishment of large porcelain houses,
its art workshops working with enamel or stained glass, but also due to
the development of its competitiveness specialized in technical and
industrial ceramics. This specificity led it to join the UNESCO creative
cities network in 2017 in the thematic category "Crafts and Folk Arts".
Lying on the first western foothills of the Massif Central, Limoges
is crossed by the Vienne, of which it was originally the first fording
point. Surrounded by a rural space preserved from any intensive
cultivation or breeding, the “city that enters the countryside” extends
over 78 km2.
Limoges is inscribed on the first western foothills of the Massif
Central, at 01°15'31 east longitude and 45°49'55 north latitude, Limoges
is located 141.6 km west of Clermont-Ferrand and 179 1 km east of the
Atlantic Ocean (Royan). Located 346.3 km south of Paris, it is located
88 km east of Angoulême, 130 km south-east of Poitiers, 180.5 km
north-east of Bordeaux and 248.4 km north of Toulouse.
Located in
Limousin, in the Haute-Vienne department, Limoges borders thirteen
municipalities: Bonnac-la-Côte, Chaptelat, Condat-sur-Vienne, Couzeix,
Feytiat, Isle, Le Palais-sur-Vienne, Panazol, Rilhac -Rancon,
Saint-Gence, Solignac, Verneuil-sur-Vienne and Le Vigen. Its territory,
which extends over 78 km2, is one of the largest in the Haute-Vienne
department.
The geographical territory of Limoges is located on the southern
branch of the Hercynian chain constituting the western foothills of the
Massif Central. This orogen 8,000 km long and 1,000 wide, born from the
formation of Pangea by collision of Gondwana and Laurussia-Baltica, is
at the origin of the Massif Central.
Under the Paleozoic era
(Phanerozoic eon), from the end of the Silurian to the beginning of the
Permian, the geological evolution linked to the Hercynian orogeny gave
the Limoges subsoil a structure of stacked thrust sheets associated with
several generations of granitoids. The result is a support base of
Precambrian granitic metamorphic rocks made of gneiss and anatexis
granite and constituting an ophiolitic unit formed of serpentinized
peridotites associated with metagabbros.
The agglomeration covers
an area of 78 km2. A tradition born in the 19th century says it was
built, like Rome or Paris, on seven hills. Its altitude is, on average,
306 meters and varies from 230 meters on the banks of the Vienne to more
than 430 meters, at a place called Magenta, to the northwest of the
town. It is 269 at the Town Hall (Place Léon Bétoulle).
Locally,
seismicity is low. Limoges has not been the epicenter of any earthquake
since 1661. The last earthquake felt in the town, with an intensity of
IV on the Mercalli scale, took place on April 21, 1983
Limoges is the largest city crossed by the Vienne, in the Loire
watershed, the Loire-Brittany hydrographic basin and the Loire
hydrographic region. Built mainly on the right bank of the river, it
marks the limit between its upper basin and its middle course. The
Vienne is not open to navigation or river transport because of too
shallow a depth, and therefore does not come under the network of inland
waterways in France.
The Aurence is a tributary of the Vienne,
which gives its name to the outer district of “Val de l'Aurence” and to
a homonymous ZUP. It has its source in the north of the town in the
mountains of Ambazac. The Auzette has its source at a place called Le
Puy de Breix, in Saint-Just-le-Martel, then crosses Panazol and Feytiat,
before flowing into the Vienne at Limoges. The Palais stream and the
Valoine feed the Vienne in the city, along with other rivers, such as
the Rigouroux. At the Aiguille, the Briance, rolling more than 8 m3/s,
brings the average flow of the Vienne to 56 m3/s. It still receives
water from the Aurence and the Auzette, bringing its flow to 61 m3/s.
In the absence of large water tables, like the Limousin and its
sources, Limoges is supplied with drinking water by surface reservoirs
and not underground reserves, which excludes pollution by radon. This
official position is challenged by many associations and journalists.
The R RESOUPLIM26 network provides quantitative monitoring of the
groundwater network in the Limoges region.
The climate that characterizes the town is qualified, in 2010, as
"altered oceanic climate", according to the typology of the climates of
France which then has eight major types of climates in mainland France.
In 2020, the town comes out of the same type of climate in the
classification established by Météo-France, which now only counts, at
first glance, five main types of climates in mainland France. It is a
transition zone between the oceanic climate, the mountain climate and
the semi-continental climate. The temperature differences between winter
and summer increase with the distance from the sea. Rainfall is lower
than at the seaside, except near the reliefs.
The climatic
parameters that made it possible to establish the 2010 typology include
six variables for temperature and eight for precipitation, whose values
correspond to the 1971-2000 normal. The seven main variables
characterizing the municipality are presented in the box below.
Communal climatic parameters over the period 1971-2000
Average annual
temperature: 11.6°C
Number of days with temperature below −5°C: 3.6 d
Number of days with temperature above 30°C: 6.1 days
Annual thermal
amplitude: 15°C
Annual precipitation totals: 1,009 mm
Number of
days of precipitation in January: 13.7 days
Number of days of
precipitation in July: 7.4 days
With climate change, these
variables have evolved. A study carried out in 2014 by the General
Directorate for Energy and Climate, supplemented by regional studies,
predicts that the average temperature should rise and the average
rainfall fall, with, however, strong regional variations. The
Météo-France meteorological station installed in the town and
commissioned in 1973 provides continuous monitoring of the evolution of
meteorological indicators. The detailed table for the period 1981-2010
is presented below.
The average annual temperature changes from
11.2°C for the period 1971-2000 to 11.4°C for 1981-2010, then to 11.8°C
for 1991-2020.