France/ A plaque in the Tarn region commemorates the twinning with a famous American town

Albi, in the Tarn region of France, is twinned with several famous towns. To celebrate thirty years of union with one of them, a plaque has been installed.

Albi is one of the French cities with an international reputation. Thanks to the Unesco listing of its old town center, thanks to Toulouse-Lautrec, thanks to the largest brick cathedral in the world... But the prefecture of the Tarn is also twinned with some famous towns.

There's Girona (Spain), one of Catalonia's largest cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, twice as many as Albi. And the lesser-known but more populous Lijiang, China (1.5 million inhabitants). And... Palo Alto, in the USA.

The emblem of Silicon Valley

Between San Jose and San Francisco, the California city is barely larger than its French twin. But, at the heart of Silicon Valley, it is home to the headquarters of global IT giants such as Hewlett-Packard and one of the world's top universities, Stanford (21 Nobel Prize winners to its credit).

Thirty years ago this year, Albi and Palo Alto became "sister cities". And to mark the occasion, Greer Stone, Mayor of Palo Alto, visited Albi in recent days.

Next to a redwood

Together with his counterpart from Albi, Stéphanie Guiraud-Chaumeil, he unveiled a plaque at the foot of the redwood tree in Rochegude Park.This sequoia sempervirens, a giant conifer emblematic of California and a symbol of longevity, gave its name to the city of Palo Alto ("big stick" in Spanish).

"The combination of Albi's historical heritage and Palo Alto's spirit of innovation makes this twinning particularly interesting, opening up promising prospects for collaboration between the two communities and the players in our territories", says Stéphanie Guiraud-Chaumeil.

"The consolidation of ties between the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum and Stanford's Cantor Art Center is an example of future cooperation exchanges in the cultural field", adds the City of Albi.

Source: actu.fr/