Buffon’s Great Forge (Grande Forge de Buffon)

What you will see

You walk through the industrial half of the site, which is largely open to the public. The high point is the blast furnace, reached by a monumental staircase built so that guests could watch the molten iron flow. Nearby are the workshops where the iron was hammered and cut, the water channels from the river and the wrought-iron gates forged on site in 1768. Leaflets from the entrance and a free audio guide app explain each stage.

History

Buffon, famous for his Histoire naturelle, inherited land and a forge from his mother. In his sixties he designed a new works where all the stages of iron making happened on one site, with homes for the workers, a bakery and a chapel around a large courtyard. Up to 400 workers were employed. The forge supplied iron railings for the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, where Buffon was the intendant.

Buffon also used the forge as a laboratory. He cast iron spheres of different sizes and timed how long they took to cool, to estimate the age of the Earth. His conclusions contradicted the Book of Genesis, and the Sorbonne pressed him to retract. After a flood in 1866 ended iron making, the site became a cement works until 1923. The same family has owned it since 1860 and has opened it to visitors since 1998.