Gardanne

Gardanne is a commune with 20,473 inhabitants (as of 1 January 2011 ) in the department of Bouches -du -Rhône in southern France. It is near Aix -en- Provence and Marseille on the railway line that connects the two cities.

There are remnants of walls have been found dating from the 1st century AD. In 1454, René d' Anjou acquired the site and was the owner until his death in 1480th The Forbin family bought the area in 1482, and in 1676 the inhabitants of the land acquired.

From the end of the 17th century, the coal deposits were opened up to Gardanne by open pit. First, coal was mainly used locally as fuel instead of wood, before the 19th century arose businesses from Marseille to important customers.

In the second half of the 19th century Gardanne developed with the opening of an aluminum plant of the Pechiney Group and the Abteufung a coal mine in the district Biver to an industrial site which with inauguration of the Aix -en -Provence Marseille on October 15, 1877 connection received on the railway network. Within a few decades, multiplied the number of inhabitants of the place, including the influx of Italians, Armenians, Poles, Czechs, Spaniards and Africans contributed the hired themselves out there as a worker. 1809 were recorded 1,600 inhabitants, in 1900 3500 and 1946 8000. The mine, one of the last in France, was closed in 2003.

In Gardanne emerged in the 1880s, several paintings of Paul Cézanne, who was here a few months.

The community Gardanne has been ruled by the Communist Party of France since 1977 under Roger Meï. Polls are preferably made in favor of the left wing. In contrast, succeeded Nicolas Sarkozy, in 2007, to reach 53.1 percent in the second round of voting for the presidential nomination.