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Unaccomplished Dream City Project, the Royal Salt Works of Arc-et-Senon.

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Arc-et-Senon is located at the foot of the Jura Mountains in north-eastern France.

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Contained in the mist-shrouded countryside is a semi-circular complex with buildings arranged in order.

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It was designed by the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, who had original ideas and also valued a classical sense of beauty.

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The beams of this bridge were designed as ships. This factory was designed in the shape of a pyramid.

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Ledoux left numerous innovative and futuristic designs.

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The director's house, a four-storey building containing a church and a town administrative office, stands at the centre of the complex.

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The 18-metre-wide buildings on either side of the columns are the salt works.

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Salt water was boiled to produce about 3,000 tonnes of salt per year.

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Craftsmen's houses and a barrel-making factory stand opposite.

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The gatehouse has a stately entrance and also contain many function rooms, including a bakery and a prison.

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All the buildings in Ledoux's semi-circular design benefit from the sun.

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A good environment makes for a good human being, he said.

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The salt water was taken from a city called Salar, about 20 kilometres away.

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The area around the Jura mountains was submerged by shallow sea several hundred millions of years ago.

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The soil still contains large amounts of salt, and the water running below the ground is ten times stronger in salt than regular sea water.

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Water mills in Salar are used to pump up underground water even today.

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It is possible to see every corner of the whole complex from the director's house.

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Ledoux originally planned to build schools and hospitals in the other half of the semi-circle to make a perfect city within one big circle.

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However, his dream never became reality.

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The French Revolution broke out ten years after the completion of the Royal Salt Works.

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Ledoux ended up in jail.