Grenoble Bastille cable car
Grenoble Bastille cable car
Grenoble France
The Grenoble-Bastille Cable car (French: Téléphérique de Grenoble Bastille), also affectionately known as The bubbles (French: Les bulles), was inaugurated on 29 September 1934 in the city of Grenoble and is the first urban cable car in the world.
In 1934 cable cars were no longer an innovation. The cable car at the Aiguille du Midi had been in existence for ten years, the one at Salève for two; by that time Europe had a sizeable number. Even in Grenoble, a cable transportation system existed between Mount Jalla and the area of Porte de France since 1875, used to transport limestone from the quarries to the cement industry.
In Grenoble, the desire for openness and expansion of the city led to its mayor at the time, Paul Mistral, to successfully organize the Exposition internationale de la houille blanche (International exposition of white coal) in 1925, and subsequently to acquire land for the city’s future airport. In 1930 together with the vice-chairman of the chamber of tourism, Paul Michoud, he planned the world’s first urban cable car in the city. The site of the Bastille overlooking the Grenoble area was naturally chosen to become a tourist attraction. The site, fortified a century earlier by General Haxo, had a natural promontory offering a 360° panoramic view.
The project took shape, and was unveiled by Paul Mistral at a city council meeting on 21 June 1930. However, Mistral did not live to see his dream come true, he died on 17 August 1932. It was his successor, Leon Martin, who inaugurated the prestigious innovation on 29 September 1934 in front of a tightly-packed crowd. That day, when a short tone sounded at around 15:45, cabins started carrying a procession of dignitaries, including the senators Joseph Vallier, Léon Perrier, and Joannès Ravanat, and the conseillers généraux Perrot and Didier into the sky. Two years later, the cable car had its true consecration when the president of the republic Albert Lebrun, visited the facility.
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