Amplepuis

Amplepuis is a commune in the Rhône department, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of eastern France, about 60 km from Lyon, 47 km from Villefranche-sur-Saône and 30 km from Roanne. Its 3,844 hectares rise from 410 to 810 metres on the Atlantic-facing slope of the Beaujolais mountains, and the Rhins, its best known river, flows on to the Loire at Roanne. The village is first mentioned in the 11th century, when its church was given to the abbey of Savigny; it was burned by the Tard-Venus in 1364 and in the 14th century was the seat of a châtellenie of the lords of Beaujeu. Its history is tied to textiles: already in the 16th and 17th centuries hemp, then cotton weaving, made the area one of the first in France for cloth and gave Amplepuis a large cloth market, and in 1872 Eugène Déchelette founded a mechanical weaving factory with a workers' quarter that bears his name. Amplepuis is the home town of Barthélemy Thimonnier (1793-1857), inventor of the sewing machine, who died there, and the museum in his name, a Musée de France, holds the first public collection of sewing machines in France. In 2023 the commune had 4,876 inhabitants. A railway station links it to Lyon, Tarare, L'Arbresle and Roanne, and it has a 120-bed hospital.