130 years of Lake Annecy Tourist Office

The Lake Annecy Tourist Office is celebrating its 130th anniversary with an immersive 7.5-minute film that transports viewers back to the 1900s!

Using artificial intelligence, 23 black and white photos and postcards of Annecy have been recoloured and animated to bring the city to life. Evoking a soft nostalgia, the film highlights emblematic places such as the Pâquier esplanade, the old town and the Château de Duingt.

This unique work is the result of a meeting between André Montaud, Chairman of the Tourist Office, and Stéphane Mugnier, an accountant with a passion for computers, who was carried away by this adventure in time.

In 1895, Annecy had a population of 20,000 and 6 hotels. After a number of regional modernisations, including the arrival of the railway in 1866, the first tourist information centre in Annecy was set up in February 1895 (the first being in Grenoble, created in 1894).

In its early years, the tourist office had to share its premises with the fire brigade at the junction of rue du Pâquier and quai Eustache Chappuis. Camille Dunant, aged 76 at the time (president of the French Alpine Club and the Florimontane association) was its first president.

4 local figures worked alongside Camille Dunant to set up this union:

• Francis Crolard: the man behind transport (Tramway Annecy Thônes), then Alpine coaches. He pushed for the creation of new hotels.
• Charles Ruphy: the visionary of skiing, he saw the potential of skiing at Semnoz.
• Joseph Serand: the mountain guide and creator of topoguides.
• Louis Boch: Mayor of Annecy, sponsor and visionary. He himself submitted the request for a 2,000 franc subsidy (around €25,000) to the town council. “The [Swiss] associations known as Syndicats d’initiative have achieved results that have exceeded the expectations of their creators. Savoie, which has similar sites, could not remain indifferent to the attraction of visitors to the mountains and to the efforts being made in the neighbouring country to offer them suitable hospitality”, he declared.