Big country, France. It takes some getting around. Fortunately, there is an alternative: visit a shrunken version. Here are five miniature versions of France, or aspects of it, designed to enchant tourists of all ages. There is something beguiling about scaled-down buildings that delight the child in all of us. Here you will find a shrunken Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe and Carcassonne citadel, of course, but also many other splendid and unexpected buildings, city squares and medieval villages, all recreated in meticulous detail.
To recreate this beautiful 1:10 scale reconstruction of a 1920s Vendée village, 25,000 roofing slates had to be cut and 80,000 tiles made by hand to cover 50 houses and other buildings constructed using authentic materials. Realistic scenes of everyday life in rural France in the olden days are evoked by 650 figures, some of them in motion. A model railway adds to the appeal.
France Miniature at Élancourt features major landmarks including Loire chateauxCocotier Tours/Shutterstock
This theme park is one of the biggest miniature parks in Europe, reproducing 117 monuments at a scale of 1:30. Some of them you’ll expect to see – the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, Chartres Cathedral and Mont Saint-Michel – but others may be more surprising, such as the Stade de France, Douai Town Hall and Limoges railway station. On your visit you will also see Saint-Émilion, Lourdes, La Rochelle, Saint-Tropez and the Orange Theatre. There are various activities available to keep the kids amused when history and architecture begin to lose their appeal.
The largest animated miniature display in France is a spectacular tribute to the country’s third-largest city. It is divided into four “worlds” – mountain, countryside, city and Lyon itself, sprawling over the banks of the Saône and the Rhône. The whole display is brought to life through lights and projections. Included in the model are more than 1,000 buildings, thousands of cars, trains and other vehicles, and over 35,000 characters. Look closely and you will see references to films and cartoons.
Standing in the leafy surroundings of the Parc Impérial in this Second Empire spa town in the Vosges is a charming collection of scaled-down replicas of famous buildings from Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comté, dating from various periods of history. There are 29 of them, including Strasbourg Cathedral, the main square of Nancy and Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel.
The centrepiece of this tourist attraction in Swiss Normandy is a landscaped miniature railway consisting of 600 metres of track carrying over 200 locomotives. There is also an outdoor train ride around the former limestone quarries, a self-guided tour of historic lime kilns and a large children’s play area.
