Saint-Dié-des-Vosges (French pronunciation: [sɛ̃ dje de voʒ] ⓘ; German: Sankt Didel, before 1999: Saint-Dié)[3] is a commune in the Vosges department, Grand Est, northeastern France.

The river Meurthe flows in the Permian basin of Saint-Dié surrounded by wooded mountains Ormont, Kemberg and La Madeleine.

Since 1880, the Council House"Mairie" has held a marvelous theater, a library with some old and valuable manuscripts, a reading hall and a museum of rocks and antiquities collected by the members of the Vosges Philomatic Society.

This society, which engaged in the collection and diffusion of knowledge, was founded in 1875 by Henry Bardy, who was soon an editor of the first local republican paper named La Gazette Vosgiennne.

Its industries included the spinning, weaving and bleaching of cotton, wire-drawing, metal-founding, the manufacture of hosiery, woodwork of various kinds (toleware), machinery, iron goods and wire screen.

A holy man who was known as "le bonhomme", he founded a ban (a political and Christian subdivision of the royal territory) in the 7th century that was originally called Foresta.

One hypothesis holds that a column constructed by Romans on a site originally dedicated to Tiwaz – Tius, god of war – might explain ancient ceremonies in the old Saint-Dié chapel at the foot of Kemberg mountain (locally called Saint-Martin).

Legends originating in the 11th century as well as popular traditions say that Saint Deodatus himself dreamed of a new monastery to be built upon a little hill called la monticule des Jointures, visible on the other side of the river.

Canons who subsequently held the rank of provost or dean came from very rich and noble families, among them Giovanni de Medici and several princes of the ducal House of Lorraine.

The institution of a town council in 1628 which appropriated part of their temporal jurisdiction, in addition to numerous French occupations, diminished the financial influence of the canons.

During the Stanislas reign and after the Lorraine annexation in 1776, the establishment in 1777 of a bishopric condemned the venerable institution, with the first bishop Monseigneur de Chaumont.

The Reformed Church building in Saint-Dié contains six stained windows, depicting the first six days of Creation, designed by the Swiss artist Annie Vallotton,[6] whose brother was the minister there.

He set up a printing-establishment at St-Dié and facilitated reflections on the theme of Earth representation and also met with what would today be called geographers, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, and the Alsatian professor Matthias Ringmann and clever Canons.

The translation dedicated to the Emperor Maximilian was completed at St-Dié on 24 April 1507; it was prefaced by a short explanatory booklet, entitled Cosmographiae Introductio, certainly the work of Waldseemüller, an introduction to cosmography that can be seen as the baptismal certificate of the New Continent.

Indeed, Waldseemüller and the scholars of the Gymnasium Vosagense then made a capital decision writing: "...And since Europe and Asia received names of women, I do not see any reason not to call this latest discovery Amerige, or America, according to the sagacious man who discovered it".