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Joué-lès-Tours (Municipality, Indre-et-Loire, France)

Flag of Joué-lès-Tours - Image by Ivan Sache, 16 July 2015

Presentation of Joué-lès-Tours
Flag of Joué-lès-Tours

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Presentation of Joué-lès-Tours

The municipality of Joué-lès-Tours (37,196 inhabitants in 2012, therefore the 2nd most populous municipality in the department) is located just south of Tours. Here the preposition lès, sometimes written les or , does not mean "the" (plural article) as usual, but "nearby", being derived from the Latin noun latus, "a side".

Joué-lès-Tours was known in the 6th century as Gaudiacus, formed on the Gallo-Roman anthroponym Gaudius and the suffix -acus, "an estate". Several other places in France (Joué, Jouy, Gouy, Gaugeac) share the same etymology. The village was subsequently known as Jocundiacus, therefore the name of its inhabitants, Jocondiens.
The boroughs of Deux-Lions and Bergeonnerie were transferred in 1964 from Joué-les-Tours to Tours.
Joué-les-Tours is a stronghold of the rubber industry; Hutchinson (a subsidiary of Total SA since 1974), Tupperware, and Zodiac Marine and Pool have a factory established on the municipal territory.

Joué-les-Tours is the birth town of the prolific playwright and librettist Jean-Nicolas Bouilly (1763-1842). The sentimental plays that yielded Bouilly's fame, as the "lachrymal poet", fell into oblivion long time ago; so did the librettos he wrote for Grétry (Pierre le Grand, 1790), Chérubini (Les Deux journées, 1800), Méhul (Une Folie, 1802; Héléna, 1803), Dalayrac (La Famille américaine, 1796), Auber (Le Séjour militaire, 1813), Boieldieu (Les Deux nuits, co-authored with Scribe, 1829) and Piccini (Le Désastre de Lisbonne, 1804). More significant for the history of opera, his play Léonore, ou l'Amour conjugal (1790), translated into German by Joseph Ferdinand von Sonnleithner, was used as the libretto of the unique opera Beethoven could achieve, Fidelio, op. 72 (originally written in 1804/1805 as Leonore, modified in 1806, and eventually revamped and renamed Fidelio in 1814).

Ivan Sache, 16 July 2015

Flag of Joué-lès-Tours

The flag of Joué-lès-Tours (photo) is white with the municipal emblem of the middle. The emblem is made of the name of the town in blue letters.

Ivan Sache, 16 July 2015