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Over the centuries, the Mines at Bex have been visited by famous people. Among them Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who passed by in 1754 and Alexandre Dumas, who visited the mines on September 28, 1832. The latter walked the route, nowadays done by train, before climbing the 'Grand Escalier' (grand staircase), visited the 'Chambre de la Roue' (Chamber of the Wheel) and exited by climbing the steps of the 'Escalier Ruiné'. During the first exile of Napoleon I on the Island of Elba, Empress Marie-Louise herself also walked through the mines. The 'Grand Reservoir' carries her name in homage of her visit.
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Alexandre Dumas (1802 -1870)
Alexandre Dumas was thirty years old when he visited the Bex salt mines.
It is the year 1832. 'Henri III' and the 'Tour de Nesle' have just recently been a triumph. Fleeing Paris which was in the throes of a cholera epidemic, the young writer, who had travelled by stagecoach, finally reaches the foothills of the Dents du Midi.
A miner leads him into the bowels of the earth: this frizzy-haired giant (Dumas was the grandson of a Haitian slave) proved less intrepid than his 'Three Musketeers' !
With great humour, Alexandre Dumas recalls his adventure in the mines: scuttling down ladders 'like a beetle down a blade of grass', asking his guide if 'this foolishness’ was nearly at an end, and dropping his lamp which his eyes followed 'until finally a dull thump could be heard as it made contact with the water, signalling to me that it had arrived at our final destination before we had.'
Retrace the steps of the illustrious author by taking part in the TrekkMines Adventure !
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Impératrice Marie-Louise (1791 - 1847)
'Gathering her blond hair under a black hood', Empress Marie-Louise entered the Bex salt mines ...
'Walking in front of her, torch in hand, the miner took her on a journey through a subterranean underworld...
Around the corner from a deep well, the young woman discovered a vast room of columns covered in gypsum crystals, the reflection of which could be seen in a salt lake.
Admiring the boldness of this feat of human engineering, all thoughts of her husband Napoleon exiled on the island of Elba, and her infant son, whom the French called 'L'Aiglon' (the eaglet) vanished that July day in 1814.
Share the emotions of the young empress by visiting the 'Marie-Louise Reservoir' !
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