Pontarlier

Pontarlier (French: [pɔ̃taʁlje]; Latin: Ariolica; Arpitan: Pontarliér) is a commune and one of the two subprefectures of the Doubs department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France. Nestled in the heart of the Jura Mountains near the Swiss border, the town lies along the Doubs River and occupies the Arlier plain at approximately 830–837 m elevation. It is overshadowed by the Grand Taureau peak, which reaches 1,323 m. Pontarlier occupies a site that has been inhabited since Neolithic times. Known as Ariolica in antiquity, it was an important transit point between Gaul and Italy. During the Middle Ages, it flourished as a trading hub on the route linking the Mediterranean and the North Sea. The city endured significant turmoil—most notably during the Thirty Years' War, when it was besieged and largely destroyed in 1639 by troops under Bernard of Saxe‑Weimar, and suffered multiple destructive fires in the 17th and 18th centuries. At the start of the 19th century, Pontarlier became known as France's "absinthe capital" when Henri‑Louis Pernod established the Pernod Fils distillery in 1805. By the early 20th century, around twenty distilleries employed nearly 3,000 people, thanks to booming national demand. That era abruptly ended with the French ban on absinthe in 1915. The modern revival of absinthe since 2001 has reconnected Pontarlier with this storied past. Pontarlier is also associated with a type of historical absinthe glass known as the Pontarlier glass. The reservoir-style glass takes its modern name from its appearance in a widely distributed advertising chromolithograph for Pernod Fils, based on a work by Pontarlier artist Charles Maire (1845–1919). The still life depicts a bottle of Pernod Fils absinthe, a water carafe and absinthe glasses, with a copy of the local Journal de Pontarlier in the foreground. Today, Pontarlier is the leading economic and commercial hub...