Cluses — Cluses Map Poster

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Cluses Map Poster

Cluses lies in the Arve valley in Haute-Savoie, at a point where the mountains close in and the valley narrows, which is where the town's name comes from. From above, the town fills the flat valley floor between the river and the slopes. Steep forested mountainsides rise on both sides, and the motorway and railway run parallel to the Arve through the gap.

The centre has an unusually regular layout for an Alpine town. After a fire destroyed much of Cluses in 1844, it was rebuilt on a planned grid of straight streets, and that pattern is still clear on the map. Cluses is closely linked to precision work: its watchmaking school dates back to the nineteenth century, and the valley later became a centre of décolletage, the machining of small precision parts.

A Cluses map poster shows how a planned town fits into a mountain landscape. The rectangular blocks of the centre sit beside the curving river and the long transport lines threading through the valley. The mountains themselves appear as empty space pressing in from each side. For people who work in the valley's workshops or pass through on the way to the ski resorts, it is a precise and recognisable image.