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Lovey walk through wonderfully maintained gardens, nice little museum to get the background of Alfred Nobel and his dynamite works. Lovey beach with old ruins to walk through and explore. Nice day out.
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Date of experience: December 2019
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Here you can learn the story of dynamite making in southern France. The area has a great park and the beach so you can spend a great day outdoors. Our guide also told us a lot of interesting stories about traditional boats.
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Date of experience: November 2019
1 Helpful vote
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For about 150 years, explosives were produced at the factory constructed here by Alfred Nobel. The museum is excellent and the surrounding park is stunning. The beach is exquisite. Put together a picnic and plan a day here.
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Date of experience: October 2019
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It's not every day that you have chance to learn a little of the history of Dynamite Production in a former Nobel owned factory, so we jumped at the chance without knowing what to expect. The factory has long since closed but in recent times a lot of effort has been put into the site to give visitors an idea of what life was like for those working there. There is plenty of car parking and as you walk into the site the visitor centre has an A-Z exhibition in both French and English providing a social history of the area and the factory in particular. Take time to study the exhibition as it is key to gaining a clearer understanding of what life was like for those employed here. Outside the visitor centre is a small but interesting garden. I downloaded a free plant identifying app before our visit, which made this part of our tour more interesting. Finally there is a beach which had a number of people sunbathing on it, even in October. An ideal location for a picnic, especially as the cafe was closed when we visited. For those involved in the restoration of this site a big well done. Hopefully in time they will be able to extend the visitor area to include more of the old buildings. I would also have been very interested to learn more about the production process and in particular how the Dynamite was used on projects such as the Mont Blanc Tunnel. If funding is an issue, why not charge a small entry fee? In summary, it's well worth a visit. …
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Date of experience: October 2019
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We walked from Banyuls along the coast path, it took about an hour and a quarter and is stunning. The site itself is a nice mixture of industrial history, gardens and the beach. Although I would have enjoyed a swim, we left the beach and sat in the grounds and had our well earned picnic. The whole place is free so you can wander around without starting at one point, but I would suggest making for the museum (which if you come by car, is at the start anyway) as there is an interesting interpretation centre here with good English content. The café is pretty basic and our coffee wasn't great, or at least the 'milk' sachets weren't.. Walking back to the main hall there was an exhibition on that was all in French and then we carried on into the boat museum/workshop. Great to see young people learning ancient skills to build wooden boats. It's an interesting site but its a shame they have fenced off so much of the old workings. I felt we only got half the story of the site because it has been made safe...…
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Date of experience: October 2018
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