Strasbourg is an Alsatian city lying at the Franco-German border. Owing to its location, it changed its national affiliation for centuries, subject to both French and German influences. Its most beautiful quarter, called Petite France (English: Little France), was built mostly in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the city was under the Prussian rule for several centuries. The German townspeople named the quarter. It is derived from the hospice of the syphilitic, built here at the end of the 15th century, in Europe syphilis was called "the French disease". In the past the quarter was mainly inhabited by fishermen, millers and tanners, while today Little France is mainly a quarter of tourists – there are hotels and restaurants in the old tenement houses.
