Strasbourg

Strasbourg (pop. 255,900), commercial and industrial city in northeastern France, famed for its Gothic cathedral. A major river port linked with the Rhine and the Rhone, it has metallurgical, petroleum, heavy-machinery, and food-processing industries. Seat of the Council of Europe, it was a free imperial city until the French seized it in 1681. Strasbourg was under German rule from 1871 to 1919.