Strasbourg City Map Poster

About Strasbourg

Before the 5th century, the city was known as Argantorati (in a Celtic language), a Celtic Gaulish name Latinized first as Argentorate (with Gaulish locative ending, meaning "place of argentum", i.e. silver) and then as Strasbourg (Latin spelling). That name is of Germanic origin and means "Town of roads". The modern Stras- is cognate to the German Straße and English street, all stemming from Proto-Germanic *(þ)rāta ("paved road" or "track"). The etymological relation between Straßen ("streets") in German and strata in Latium's ancient Greek language points at least to a similar semantic history: streets are made by man while strata are not; however later on Earth layers became associated with 'layers' in space or time.