Chamalières (Auvergnat: Chamaleiras) is a commune in the Puy-de-Dôme department, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, central France. With 17,276 inhabitants (2019), Chamalières is the fourth-largest town in the department. It lies adjacent to the west of Clermont-Ferrand and about 241 km from Lyon.

History

Several thousand wooden Gallo-Roman ex-votos, most of them anthropomorphic standing figures, also including images of limbs and internal organs, dated by associated coins to the first century, were recovered from the shrine at the mineral springs known as the Source des Roches ("Rock Spring"). An inscribed lead tablet found at the spring is a major source of information on the Gaulish language. A comparable cache of Gaulish ex-voto were recovered from a sanctuary at the sources of the Seine, sacred to Sequana.

Population

Notable places

Chamalières is the place where the Banque de France located its printing works in 1923, which printed former French franc banknotes, and now prints Euro and CFA franc banknotes.

People