Page 5 - STM-2014-07-EN

position is at the origin of the complex and changing fortunes of the city. Strasbourg in fact, was developing until around the 16th century as a large shopping and fnancial center; due to its customs facilities, that made it one of the major European centers of transit trade, the city had a period of great fortune in the eighteenth century. in the mid-nineteenth century Strasbourg became a conspicuous communications hub with the construction of the railroads from Basel to Paris, the channel Marne-Rhine and Rhone, the Rhine river port and later the grand canal d’alsace. it was endowed with an efcient industrial system in the period of german domination (1870-1919) and fnally, by the mid-19th century