Grasse and the Funicular

When I first came to live in Grasse in 2000, there was no operating railway line to a town which once had (if you count its funicular) three. To the town's great advantage, in 2005 the line from Cannes was re-opened and it’s now both easy and cheap to take the train to Cannes, Antibes, Nice and even beyond to Ventimiglia in Italy, although that takes about two hours.

A modern station building was built together with a quite elaborate new car park, while the old traditional-looking station has been refurbished as a ‘Maison de Mobilité', with a ticket office for local buses and a centre for bicycle hire and storage. The whole complex is the grandly named “Pôle intermodal de Grasse”. The great pity is that it’s not really complete. Few people use the new car park (the old one is nearly always rammed) and to get to the town centre, you either have to walk up several hundred steps or take a shuttle bus.

The part of the ‘intermodal’ which is missing is a new funicular line, much planned and discussed but yet to materialise, due to various objections such as ‘loss of green space’(!!!). The silly thing is that there was once a funicular, more or less exactly where a new one would be built – but it ceased working in 1938. You can see lots of pictures on a website maintained by an expert on old railways, Roger Farnsworth, but suffice in this post to show two well-known postcards. This one shows a car leaving the top station, alongside what the site looks like today.

Top station of Grasse's funicular and how it looks today

The top station is a public café and venue for Grasse seniors, known as 'La Rotonde'. The original architects clearly wanted to create an impressive space, because what is now the dining area is large and surrounded on two sides by impressive windows which still give magnificent views to the south of the town. The room has recently been re-decorated and it looks very smart.

La Rotonde café/restaurant

A postcard written in 1930 shows the whole line as it once was, stretching up from the station to the old town.

Apart from the top station, the only remains which I have found are just south of av Pierre Semard. This was where the downward and upward cars crossed over with each other, so there are two tracks.

In the lower picture, the twin tracks of the system are clearly visible

A new Funicular?

There was a simulation of the planned new funicular on the web a few years ago. It has since disappeared, but you can see some publicity material in several places, including here, and via YouTube:

A new housing, shops and office development is in progress on the opposite side of av Pierre Sémard from the station. I have been told by the Maire that space has been left in the design for a possible new funicular or perhaps, I think more prosaically, for a series of escalators to take train passengers to and from the old town above.

Grasse, after a period rather in the doldrums, has progressed a great deal, especially in the last ten years. The programme to build a thriving educational scene seems to be working, abandoned shops and commercial premises in the old town centre have come back to life, and one sees plenty of people in the streets. One can only imagine how the creation of a modern funicular, which would be the only one in the region, would further boost the town’s prosperity.