Between the 16th and the 27th of September, we offer you the opportunity to take a closer look at the city from a different perspective: embark on a treasure hunt while strolling through the streets of Strasbourg.
How it works:
- One person or a team;
- There are a total of 16 challenges: you will find them below, with a map at the end of the page to help you find them in the city;
- The treasure hunt is opened for two weeks: you can wander through the streets of Strasbourg at your pace, the challenge needs to be completed before Friday the 27th of September at 5pm. Time is not of the essence: you don’t need to be the first to win the challenge;
- The main part of this treasure hunt is the observation challenge. You need to take a picture for each challenge;
- Bonus points if you answer (in a Word file, or in the e-mail that you’ll send us at the end of your treasure hunt with the pictures) to our bonus points questions.
When you will have completed the challenge, send us an e-mail on euraxess(@)unistra(.)fr with your pictures in it (we recommend that you create a file on Seafile and share the link with us, so the e-mail isn’t too heavy). Please note that for your submission to be taken in consideration, the subject of the email and the name of your Seafile file must both contain “EURAXESS TREASURE HUNT” and your name and surname (or the name of your team).
The Euraxess Centre team will study your submissions and decide on a winner who will be announced on the 4th of October.
Criteria for the winner:
- Complete challenge;
- Answering the bonus points questions (bonus point from 1 to 3 for each question according to the detail given in your answer);
- Creativity/inventiveness for the pictures of the observation challenges;
- Quality of the pictures: the more beautiful the picture, the more points;
- Adherence to specific instructions.
During the challenge, do not hesitate to share your pictures on Instagram or Facebook and to tag your Euraxess Centre (Instagram : @euraxessstrasbourg ; FB : euraxessunistra), so we can share them in stories!
THE CHALLENGES
- First challenge
Observation Challenge: Find the dog that lies in the Mother of Strasbourg’s inhabitants
Bonus point: The façade of the building hosting the dog hosts many statues. How many can you count?
- Second challenge
Observation Challenge: Find the building with the most flower boxes on its windows, in a well-known area of Strasbourg, made of bridges over the water and houses with half-timbering.
Bonus point: What is the name of this part of the city? Do you what it is said to originate from?
- Third challenge
Observation challenge: At the end of the half-timbering houses, the branches of the river make one, and a bridge adorned with towers, dating back to the medieval era, appears. Find this bridge.
Bonus point: Count the number of towers you see along the bridge.
- Fourth challenge
Observation Challenge: Find a signboard
A signboard is a panel bearing an emblem, inscription, or symbolic object that a shopkeeper or artisan places at their establishment to signal to the public. Signs have evolved today, but in the past, they corresponded to an imaginative popular language that had to be clear to the people.
For this observation challenge, you have to find at least 3 signboards in the area around the Cathedral (clue: there are at least 18 signboards in the Carré d’Or, in the streets behind the place Gutenberg, and around the place du Corbeau) .
- Fifth challenge
Observation Challenge: on the place celebrating the invention of printing, a building is adorned by representations of columns in a Greek style. Take a picture of each style of column.
Bonus point: can you identify the name of each column style?
- Sixth challenge
Observation Challenge: Turn around from number 5, and you will find an aqueduct turning on itself to the cheers of children.
- Seventh challenge
Observation Challenge: This gate guards the entry of a city within the city. Behind this tower, healers dispense their care, in old and new buildings.
Bonus point: Can you tell us what adorns and crowns this monument?
- Eighth challenge
Observation Challenge: This monument is the little sibling of number 7.
The roof of this monument is covered with tiles typical of our region: called in French “the Alsatian tiles”, and in Alsatian and German the Bieberschwantz.
Bonus point: Do you guess the meaning of the Alsatian name, based on the form of these tiles?
- Ninth challenge
Observation Challenge: Here lay the remnants of what once circled and protected the city. No longer visible, they are marked by a metallic line on the ground, on a place near a busy drinking area, just next to a playground.
Bonus point: What can be read on the metallic line?
- Tenth challenge
Observation Challenge: Not far from number 9, lies a gate, in a Renaissance style. Initially localised Rue Brûlée, as the gate of the former hotel of the Rathsamhausen family, this monument was placed in its current location and integrated in the ramparts in 1913, after the Rathsamhausen hotel was destroyed.
Bonus point: The inscription indicates its date of origin: what is the date?
- Eleventh challenge
Observation Challenge: In an “art nouveau” Temple of Consumerism born in 1919, stands a royal monument of wooden steps leading you perhaps to heaven, or perhaps to luxurious shoes.
- Twelfth challenge
Observation Challenge: When you wander into the Neustadt, if you cross the Avenue des Vosges, you can get lost and find yourself on the banks of the Nile.
- Thirteenth challenge
Observation Challenge: Standing high in the Krutenau/University area, this building keeps warm the waters of a place of bathing and meeting.
- Fourteenth challenge
Observation Challenge: In a building now hoarding the money of French citizens, lies a memorandum to the very first time the French anthem was sung.
- Fifteenth challenge
Observation Challenge: On top of a building dedicated to the highest level of classical entertainment, She who supports the delights of dancing, stands amongst her sisters, crowned by a garland and playing her lyre.
Bonus point: name her.
- Sixteenth challenge
Observation Challenge: A red dragon lies between the rue de l’Ecarlate and the rue Saint-Louis: can you find him?
