The road signs that teach travellers about France

For more than 50 years, France's brown motorway signs have done far more than point the way: they've sold the country's history, culture and identity in seconds.

Most visitors to France notice the food, the villages and the landscapes. Fewer clock one of the country's most distinctive attractions flashing past the car window.

Across the country, thousands of illustrated signs in muted shades of brown point motorway drivers towards monuments, vineyards, famous local dishes and national sites. One might direct you to the Millau Viaduct or the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud. Another might highlight a region famous for its cheese. Some commemorate darker histories. On the motorway between Grenoble and Lyon, one panel marks the Izieu Memorial where 44 Jewish children and seven adult staff were arrested in 1944 on the orders of Klaus Barbie and deported to Auschwitz.

Taken together, the signs form one of France's most overlooked cultural projects: a vast open-air gallery designed to sell the country to itself and to anyone passing through.

"I visited a monastery thanks to one of the brown road signs just the other month," a colleague told me. "I've grown up seeing these signs, and I'd heard of Brou Monastery [near Bourg en Bresse], but I didn't know it was open to the public."

A crash course in France from the driver's seat

The unique motorway signs first appeared in 1972, multiplying to more than 500 in the seven years that followed. The state-commissioned panels promoted sites of interest like castles and manor houses, and elements of regional culture and identity – architectural styles, gastronomy and wildlife.

In an era where drivers rarely wore seatbelts and often smoked at the wheel, and there were very few radars to prevent speeding, they also encouraged motorists to slow down. Rather than being a distraction, the brown signs served to break autopilot mode and were thought to improve road safety.

The earliest signs were created by Swiss-born designer Jean Widmer, who died last month, and his former wife Nicole Sauvage, a husband-and-wife team whose work also shaped some of the most recognisable visual symbols in modern France, including the Centre Pompidou logo. Their motorway signs were simple and graphic: three planes for Toulouse, a hub of the aerospace industry; chicory, endives and potatoes as a nod to the agriculture of Hauts-de-France; half-timbered houses for Alsace; and grapes in a Cognac glass.

More than 400 of Widmer and Sauvage's designs are now held by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP) in Paris. CNAP is not usually open to the general public, but several original road signs will be on display at the Espace Culturel Decauville in Île-de-France from mid-April to mid-July as part of an exhibition on holidays.

The road signs were designed to promote tourism by showcasing France's heritage, crafts and local industry," says Véronique Marrier, a conservationist at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques and former close friend of Widmer. "Widmer's approach was mathematical and pragmatic, inspired by the Bauhaus movement."

The science behind the art

The........

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