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 <!--iges around Grenoble. .MB, A.R.I.B.A. 18S By means of motor charabancs or trams, which start from i^'^ the centre of the town, most of the villages can very easily ^^^^ be reached. The trams, which are quite a feature of Grenoble, develop into powerful mountain trains, it seems, since they , . extend some 12 to 15 miles into the foothills around , Grenoble, and thus are of considerable benefit to the farms TYT and other industries, for the bringing of fruit, or produce, •J and other materials from the outlying villages, ijj^j The roads for the most part are surprisingly good, many and °^ *^^ main roads being coated with tar. They are also »] wonderfully engineered in the more mountainous districts, one and in many cases tunnels are cut clean through the rock, cha the longer ones being perpetually lit by electricity. Build- stra ings in the country typify the wildness of their surround- not ings. Many of the houses are roughly built of stone with a ni thatched roofs and gables stepped with stone slates, quite 1 a feature of the Dauphine. T)id There are several very fine chateaux in the district. ^^^^ At Sassenage will be found a moated chateau of the seven- y*^ teenth century, built when the eleventh century chateau on "J'y a hill above was abandoned. The interior contains much z^ of interest in the way of furniture, pictures and armour, etc. Above the main entrance is an allegorical carving smi • • . • ,^ representing the fairy Melusine, who according to the ,, French legend married a knight named Raymond, on thai condition that occasionally she should be left alone ; this (< request was subsequently refused, so that she transformed f herself into a winged serpent, and is supposed to inhabit 5 in spirit some caves nearby, and only appears on the death lier of any inmates of the castle. In the village is a church ] with Romanesque belfry, somewhat spoilt in effect by an the immense clock. In a side chapel is the tomb of Lesdigiueres, as 1 who lived in the sixteenth century and was known as con " the old fox of Dauphiny." 1 At Vizilles is a very fine chateau magnificently situated, clo' built in 1610, enlarged in the eighteenth century and restored in the nineteenth century. It was in this castle ^^^ that a meeting was arranged in 1788 among the various ^°^ states of Dauphine, which became a prelude to the French . Revolution. Over the main entrance, just visible in ^ photograph, is an equestrian statue of Lesdigiueres. Vizilles, named by the Romans Vigilia, was an important % station in those times, since it lay on the road between c Italy and Vienne. Pjj, On a hill above the town is a very fine little Romanesque ].g^, chapel, particularly pure in style and according to tradition connected with the Templars. In many of the villages the manufacture of cement is actively carried out. There beauty is therefore marred by the clouds of dust which overhang them, and by the f actor V chimnevs which belch forth dense clouds of smoke.-->