![]() The brothers were part of a wave of French visionaries that included engineering virtuoso Gustave Eiffel, fashion designer Coco Chanel and aviation pioneer Louis Blériot, responsible for the first manned flight between Great Britain and Continental Europe. From 1929 they branched into rail transport: rubber-tyred Micheline locomotives first trundled along rail tracks in 1931. Next, they invented the first automobile tyre, the first tyre able to handle speeds above 100km per hour, and the first removable rim. The Michelin brothers’ first breakthrough was a patent for the removable pneumatic tyre, which was tested out in the Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle race of 1891. “The purpose of L’Aventure Michelin is to share Michelin’s history, culture and values with as many people as possible.” ![]() ![]() “The story of Michelin and that of Clermont-Ferrand are closely tied,” said Stéphane Nicolas, curator at L’Aventure Michelin. So far 600,000 visitors have made the journey to see this temple to the brand since its inauguration in 2009. Just a few kilometres east is L’Aventure Michelin (The Michelin Adventure), an interactive gallery and museum installed in an early 20th-Century building in Clermont-Ferrand’s largest Michelin industrial site. Travellers needn’t stray far from Clermont-Ferrand’s historical centre to learn about the Michelin legacy. The 1,465m-high Puy de Dôme is just visible from Clermont-Ferrand if you stand on the steps of the city’s icon, its twin-spired Cathédrale Notre-Dame. These 80 hills and cones are the remains of volcanoes that fell silent more than 7,000 years ago. Though an industrial city, Clermont-Ferrand has a bucolic setting: the sweeping Limagne plain is puckered by the Chaîne des Puys, which was inscribed on Unesco’s World Heritage list in 2018 due to its impressive geological properties. “What was innovative in the Michelin Guides was their incorporation of automobile transport, their more detailed information on routes their rating system for hotels and restaurants.”Ĭlermont-Ferrand was the original location of the Michelin head office and remains so to this day. “Michelin anticipated the directions in which tourism was heading in the early 20th Century,” said Prof Patrick Young, a specialist in 19th- and 20th-Century French history at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell. With the advent of Michelin stars in 1926, awarded to the best restaurants in the guides, durable car tyres and the pursuit of exceptional boeuf bourguignon became forever entwined. The guides’ coverage of restaurants with standout regional cuisine and well-stocked wine cellars coaxed drivers into travelling further (and, of course, they needed sturdy Michelin tyres to complete their journeys). One of the company’s cleverest manoeuvres was to highlight food worth travelling for. With the launch of Michelin Guides and maps in the early 20th Century, the brothers managed to make ‘Michelin’ a by-word not only for tyres – today they are the world’s second-largest tyre manufacturer by revenue – but also for travel and haute cuisine.
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