World Heritage Identification Number: 1302
World Heritage since: 2009
Category: Cultural Heritage
Transboundary Heritage: No
Endangered Heritage: No
Country: 🇨🇭 Switzerland
Continent: Europe
UNESCO World Region: Europe and North America
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La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle: A Unique Example of Watchmaking Town Planning
The La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle watchmaking town-planning site, inscribed into the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2009, offers a unique insight into the historical development of the watchmaking industry and its impact on urban design. Situated in the Swiss Jura mountains, these two neighboring towns have maintained their distinctive planning and architecture, reflecting the specific needs of the watchmaking culture that emerged in the region during the 17th century.
More to come…UNESCO Description of the World Heritage Site
The site of La Chaux-de-Fonds / Le Locle watchmaking town-planning consists of two towns situated close to one another in a remote environment in the Swiss Jura mountains, on land ill-suited to farming. Their planning and buildings reflect watchmakers’ need of rational organization. Planned in the early 19th century, after extensive fires, the towns owed their existence to this single industry. Their layout along an open-ended scheme of parallel strips on which residential housing and workshops are intermingled reflects the needs of the local watchmaking culture that dates to the 17th century and is still alive today. The site presents outstanding examples of mono-industrial manufacturing-towns which are well preserved and still active. The urban planning of both towns has accommodated the transition from the artisanal production of a cottage industry to the more concentrated factory production of the late 19th and 20th centuries. The town of La Chaux-de-Fonds was described by Karl Marx as a “huge factory-town” in Das Kapital where he analyzed the division of labour in the watchmaking industry of the Jura.
Encyclopedia Record: La Chaux-de-Fonds
La Chaux-de-Fonds is a Swiss city in the canton of Neuchâtel. It is located in the Jura Mountains at an altitude of 992 metres, a few kilometres south of the French border. After Geneva, Lausanne, Biel/Bienne, and Fribourg, it is the fifth-largest city in the Romandie, the French-speaking part of the country, with a population of 36,915.Additional Site Details
Area: 283.9 hectares
Coordinates: 47.1038888889 , 6.8327777778
