Orientation

Strasbourg has a good mix of sights to see, museums to visit, and bars to end the night with; you won’t be sitting alone in your hostel room in this city. The main streets swarm with tourists, both foreign and French, during the summer. They flock like fireflies to a flame to visit the grand cathedral that dominates the city center. The city itself is very beautiful, and in summer the streets are worth exploring by foot—pedestrian zones and large parks make doing so very easy. The mass of green space on the outskirts of Strasbourg means you can escape the inner city noise for the peace of a calm park. With the Council of Europe situated northeast of the center of the city, Strasbourg is the core for a lot of European political debates and discussions.

The vielle ville is surrounded completely by the River Ill, making it a lemon-shaped island reachable by a series of bridges, which connect quais running on either side of the river. The train station is a short walk northwest of the city’s center; to reach the center on foot, head down rue du Mairie Kuss, over pont Kuss, then make a sharp right onto quai Desaux and take the immediate left onto Grande Rue. This continues to one of Strasbourg’s busiest squares, place Gutenberg. Pl. Gutenberg reaches east to place de la Cathedral; head north up rue des Grandes Arcades to reach place Kléber, and to the southwest of the square is Petite France.