OK, I’ll admit it again. I chose this hotel because of the name. But it turned out to be a pleasant and convenient place to stay, so I can heartily recommend it even to those who are in Belfort for other reasons.

Stairs in Hôtel Vauban, Belfort, with works by local artists

After a while I asked Mme Lorange, the woman who ran the hotel, if this Hôtel Vauban had any connection to the one in Besançon, where I had stayed two years before. She said no, and explained that there were over a dozen small independent hotels called Hôtel Vauban around the edges of France, near the major Vauban sites. “We all know each other,” she said, but the hotels are otherwise not connected.

View from my room in Hôtel Vauban

The Hôtel Vauban in Belfort has fourteen rooms for one, two or three guests. No two rooms are alike. Each room has its own unique ambience, as shown on the hotel’s website. I had room 24, where I stayed for four nights.

Behind the house is a large garden where it is possible to have breakfast when the weather is nice — as it was when I was there.

Breakfast in the garden

With breakfast each morning, they lent me a copy of the local newspaper, L’Est Républicain, so I could find out what, if anything, was going on in Belfort on that day. Not much was, since in France most things are closed in August, but I did learn that the stand-up comedienne Olivia Moore would be performing at the Maison du Peuple one evening during my stay.

Garden of the Hôtel Vauban

My photos in this post are from 2016. I wrote the text in 2020.

See more posts on Belfort, France.
See more posts on Sébastien Le Prestre, Marquis de Vauban.