Gray

Gray grew around a castle on a spur above the Saône, with a port on the river below. From the Middle Ages its local merchants shipped agricultural produce and iron goods towards Lyon and the south. The upper town and river harbour together made Gray an important commercial centre of the county of Burgundy.

Fires damaged the town in 1477 and 1479, but Gray prospered again in the sixteenth century. Its church, begun in 1478, was completed around 1559, the old town hall renewed and a new circuit of defensive walls raised from 1551. French forces occupied Gray in 1668 and returned in 1674, when the remaining fortifications were demolished. In the eighteenth century a new Hôtel-Dieu hospital and cavalry barracks added to the town's public institutions.