For years, the city endured dark times, but also moments of solidarity, resistance, courage, and hope, all woven into its streets, hidden in subtle urban details, and preserved in evocative names.This eight-stop geolocated journey invites you to explore these historic sites. Let yourself be guided and (re)discover Limoges in a new way, where each step uncovers a story, an event, or a memory waiting to be shared.A thoughtful walk to see Limoges through a different lens.

France

Destination Limoges

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Limoges city center

In 1943, 40 Italian planes were seized by the Germans for missions against the Maquis in mountainous areas. One of these aircraft crashed in Jumeau-Le-Grand on 16 June 1944 during a raid against Georges Guingouin’s Maquis due to technical issues. The plane remained on the ground for some time before its fuselage was recovered by a private individual and transported to Limoges, where it became a trophy and a symbol of the Resistance. Placed at the end of one of the terraces in the Jardin de l’Évêché, it had to be removed in the 1980s due to weather damage. It was restored at Base aérienne 274 before becoming the centerpiece of the Limoges Resistance Museum.The Limoges Resistance Museum spans 1,400 m² and features two floors showcasing its permanent collections, comprising nearly 800 artifacts within a meticulously curated exhibit that traces the historical events of World War II. The museum also includes a temporary exhibition space, an educational room for school activities, and a documentation center open to researchers.

An airplane as a trophy at the Resistance Museum

Starting in 1941, thousands of Jewish fugitives who had secretly crossed the demarcation line arrived in Haute-Vienne, a relatively isolated and predominantly rural department. The Jewish community grew from a few dozen to over 5,000 people, largely organized by Rabbi Deutsch.In November 1942, the Germans invaded the southern zone, causing panic among the Jewish population in Haute-Vienne. The internment camps at Nexon and Saint-Germain-les-Belles followed the escalating policy of persecution and repression, becoming places of assembly and transit before deportation to concentration and extermination camps.In Limoges, the OSE (Œuvre de Secours aux Enfants) gathered, from 1942 onward, the youngest children they managed to rescue from internment camps in southern France, such as Gurs or Rivesaltes, in a large house on Rue Eugène Varlin. The Limoges nursery cared for up to 70 children under the age of five—orphans, children in danger, and even children of Resistance fighters engaged in the Maquis. During the first roundups in August 1942, some of the nursery’s children were arrested under the pretext of family reunification.Aware of the threat of deportation, Gaston Lévy decided to remove the children from the nursery and hide them under false identities with adoptive families in the Indre department. The children thus went underground.As German anti-Semitic policies hardened and the French state collaborated in organizing roundups, Resistance fighters, religious authorities, teachers, social workers, and ordinary citizens helped protect Jews or organize their escape. Among them was Germaine Ribière, one of the first women in France to be named Righteous Among the Nations in 1967. During the roundups in Haute-Vienne, Creuse, and Indre on 26 August and in September 1942, she provided hiding places for children from OSE/UGIF care centers. On a national scale, she organized the concealment of threatened Jewish children for Témoignage Chrétien and, on a daily basis, managed social services and convoys.

Square of the Righteous Among the Nations in Limoges

Designed by architect Roger Gonthier in the early 1930s, the Les Coutures neighborhood was thrust into war on 19 June 1940, when three German planes bombed the train station and randomly strafed the area. The attack was so swift that no warning was given. The terrified population took refuge in cellars. One woman was killed, and a teenage girl and a young child were injured. At 15 Rue Adrien Pressemane, the scars of this episode have been preserved.Popular and hostile to the Vichy regime, Les Coutures was placed under strict surveillance by the authorities. Nevertheless, its labyrinthine and enclosed layout made it a haven for Resistance members, allowing them to move discreetly between buildings. Attics provided hiding places for escapees. In the neighborhood, the Front National (affiliated with the Communist Party) took root, with figures like Francis Demay, Marie-Louise Lagrange, and Maria Roche. They also received support from Jeanne Nicot.Born Grandjean, Jeanne Nicot was a member of the Forces Françaises de l'Intérieur (FFI). She sheltered escapees from the Saint-Germain-les-Belles internment camp in her home. Arrested in 1941 but later released, she was repeatedly targeted by the Vichy police and the Gestapo. Her home was raided 17 times! On 20 March 1944, she was arrested by the Gestapo, imprisoned from 22 March to 15 April at Romainville, and then deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp on 22 April. She was liberated on 21 May 1945.

Les Coutures: a neighborhood under close surveillance during the war

German railway workers, known as "Banofs" (from the German Bahnhof, meaning "train station"), were sent to Limoges under the command of the Transport-Kommandantur. Priority was given to German convoys transporting troops, equipment, and prisoners from nearby internment camps such as Nexon or Saint-Germain-les-Belles. Prisoners were brought onto the tracks through a gate still visible today, then deported via Drancy to various concentration and extermination camps. In the basement of the station, beneath the tracks, the Wehrmacht walled off part of an old road tunnel to create an air-raid shelter. The marking at the entrance, "Réservé à la Wehrmacht" (Reserved for the Wehrmacht), is still visible today. The station’s signage was completed in German. Each evening, the curfew emptied the building and platforms. Access to the tracks was strictly forbidden to anyone not authorized by the SNCF (French National Railway Company).However, due to its size, the station was difficult for the Germans to control. It served as a strategic base for a significant group within the Resistance-Fer, active since 1941 under the leadership of Paul Vives-Caillat. Until 1943, this unorganized individual resistance carried out sabotage requiring minimal equipment: draining oil from axle bearings and introducing sulfuric acid into axle boxes. Weapons were hidden in the station’s dome. André Lafarge, Henri Lagrange, and their comrades disrupted German communications. Thanks to the intelligence they provided, RAF bombers destroyed the Gnome et Rhône factory near the Puy-Imbert marshalling yard on the night of 9–10 February 1944.To counter the Resistance, Gestapo repression intensified in 1944, as commemorated by a plaque in the station’s hall honoring SNCF agents who disappeared during the war. Bullet marks and two graffiti on the station walls recall that on 10 August 1944, a general strike by railway workers paralyzed rail traffic, and on the 19th, the station was taken over by the Resistance-Fer until the city’s liberation on 21 August.

Limoges train station under German rule: occupation, resistance, and repression

In early 1943, the KDS (Kommandeur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD), commonly known as the Gestapo, took over a property belonging to the Lacaux industrial family at the corner of Cours Gay-Lussac and Impasse Tivoli. The location was no accident: tucked away in a dead-end alley, the buildings were hidden behind high walls. The nearby Feldgendarmerie (German military police) stationed at the Marceau barracks and the train station made it easy to transfer prisoners.The building at the entrance to the alley was nicknamed the "Brown House" or the "Wolf Trap" by those unfortunate enough to enter and lucky enough to leave alive to tell the tale. The cellars served as detention and torture chambers. The building was demolished in the 1970s and replaced by a modern structure. Further down the alley to the right, a large bourgeois house accommodated some high-ranking officers. Behind it, the garages were also used for torture.The office was initially led by Hans Nikolaï Jessen, then by August Meïer in June 1943. A police officer since 1923, a Nazi Party member since 1933, and part of the SS since 1934, Meïer had previously operated in Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and the Caucasus, where his unit was involved in numerous atrocities.Between November 1942 and August 1944, the Nazi police in Limoges and their local collaborators arrested at least 920 political or racial enemies of the occupier. Nearly all of those arrested suffered violence or torture. Those who survived were sent to Romainville, Parisian prisons, or the Compiègne camp before being deported to concentration camps, like Violette Szabo. A British secret agent with the Special Operations Executive (SOE), she was captured on 10 June 1944 near Salon-la-Tour in an ambush set by a German patrol. She was tortured at Villa Tivoli, then deported to Ravensbrück concentration camp, where she died on 5 February 1945.After the war, the street was renamed. Today, it is known as Impasse Saint-Exupéry.

The Villa Tivoli : The "brown house" or the "wolf trap"

On 8 August 1944, the departmental leaders of various Resistance movements decided to encircle Limoges to secure its liberation. Their goal was to pressure the German garrison, commanded by General Gleiniger, into surrendering and avoid a frontal assault that could cause civilian casualties.General Gleiniger refused to surrender to the communist resistant Georges Guingouin, who had been the departmental leader of the FFI since 3 August 1944, dismissing him as a "terrorist." A neutral negotiator was then appointed: Jean d’Albis, grandson of Théodore Haviland and a correspondent for the Swiss consulate. Involved in the Resistance, d’Albis produced false papers for refugees.After several discussions, an act of surrender was drafted and approved on 21 August 1944. The signing ceremony was set for 8:30 PM at the Hôtel de la Paix, Gleiniger’s headquarters—a location of both strategic and symbolic importance, as it overlooked two war memorials: one for the 1870 war and another for World War I. A commemorative plaque on the Hôtel de la Paix’s façade, facing Boulevard de Fleurus, marks these events.Upon hearing the news of the surrender, the SS regiment mutinied, and a German convoy of 1,150 men fled Limoges to the north. General Gleiniger, arrested for treason by the SS, was driven to suicide. Georges Guingouin and his men entered Limoges around 9:00 PM, heading first to the prison to free inmates before establishing his headquarters at the Hôtel Haviland.

Hôtel de la Paix: negotiations for the liberation of Limoges, 21 August 1944

Joseph Storck, the headmaster of Alsatian origin, saved numerous Jewish boarding students by providing them with false identities printed in his clandestine workshop. He systematically expelled Jewish students on trivial grounds to protect them from Gestapo registration. He hid them during Milice raids and placed endangered youth with host families.In late 1942, students Gabriel Judde, Félix Champarnaud, Claude Cahen, and Jacques Fourneau formed a resistance network called the "17th Bar." To support the Maquis, they broke into the Limoges Youth Work Camps uniform depot on April 7, 1943. Many members of the network were arrested. On August 26, 1943, 37 high school students and young workers were tried by the Special Section of the Limoges Court of Appeal for "demonstrations against the French people or their government." The youngest were sent to the Nexon camp, while adults were imprisoned in Limoges. Headmaster Storck’s intervention secured some releases but could not prevent the deportation of many. After the war, Joseph Storck was honored as Righteous Among the Nations. A plaque in the school’s entrance hall pays tribute to him.Just before the Liberation, the Petit Quartier was requisitioned by the Milice as a barracks. Many resistants and Jews, including future writers Robert Giraud and André Schwarz-Bart, were tortured there.

Gay-Lussac high school: a hub of student resistance

At the start of the war, King Leopold III of Belgium chose—amid controversy—to surrender to the Nazi threat. A group of Belgian ministers and parliamentarians fled the country. After briefly seeking refuge in Poitiers, the exiles arrived in Limoges on May 31, 1940, where they were welcomed by Mayor Léon Betoulle. They condemned the king’s surrender in a vote and occupied several offices in the Town Hall and the prefecture. Belgian flags flew alongside French ones. On November 16, 1940, Léon Betoulle was dismissed by government decree and replaced by André Faure, a local industrialist.Under German occupation, Limoges Town Hall became a stronghold and a key center of Resistance activity in the southern zone. Lucien Berdasé, head of the military affairs office and later the census bureau, became an indispensable ally to the Resistance. His efforts were wide-ranging: he sabotaged lists of Jewish residents, issued fake certificates for departures to Germany, hid weapons stored at the Town Hall, forged birth certificates, and established a regional network for producing false documents. He also provided safe passage and travel permits for Maquis vehicles, with the support and complicity of Laporte, the prefecture’s secretary-general. Suzanne Rodi-Boyer, who oversaw food ration card distribution at the Town Hall, also contributed to the Resistance by creating false papers for Jewish families using stamps stolen from the municipality.On March 4, 1945, General de Gaulle visited the Town Hall. Georges Guingouin, a Companion of the Liberation, served as mayor of Limoges from April 29, 1945, to October 19, 1947.

Limoges town hall: a turbulent history

Inaugurated in January 2012, the Musée de la Resistance has gradually become a museum of 20th century history. Its main mission is to publicise the historical events of the country and the region, and to demonstrate and disseminate the values of the Republic. It adds to its collections through purchases and donations, and showcases them at exhibitions.&nbsp;Located in the former 17th and 18th century convent of the Sœurs de la Providence on rue Neuve Saint-Etienne, the museum's 1400m2, spread over two floors, house the permanent collections, comprising almost 800 items in a museographic tour that rigorously retraces the historical events of the Second World War. The museum also includes a room for temporary exhibitions, an educational room for organising events for schoolchildren, and a documentation centre open to researchers.&nbsp;Divided into ten sequences, this dynamic tour is based on a scientific programme devised by Olivier Wieviorka, a nationally-renowned historian specialising in the Second World War; Pascal Plas, a historian specialising in the Second World War in the Centre-Ouest region; and Annie Martin, the museum's director.&nbsp;