Strasbourg, long contested between France and Germany, embodies the complexities of European borderland identity. Annexed by Louis XIV in 1681 and later absorbed into the German Empire in 1871, the city became a stage for competing projects of nationalization, as both states imposed language, education, and historical narratives to secure loyalty. While French and German intellectuals framed Strasbourg as integral to their respective cultural legacies—Goethe famously praising its cathedral as deutscher Baukunst—local residents often embraced a distinct Alsatian identity, blending linguistic and cultural traditions from both sides. This composite identity underscores the city’s role as a liminal space, where border populations negotiated overlapping sovereignties and affiliations without collapsing into exclusive national categories. Strasbourg’s symbolic weight carried into the modern era. After the devastation of Franco-German wars and Nazi occupation, the Élysée Treaty of 1963 laid the foundations for reconciliation, reinforced by youth exchanges, joint history textbooks, and binational initiatives. The Franco-German broadcaster ARTE, headquartered in Strasbourg since 1992, exemplifies the city’s reorientation from frontier of enmity to hinge of cooperation. Once a battleground of national rivalries, Strasbourg now functions as a European border city of integration, embodying the reconfiguration of borderlands into dynamic spaces of negotiation, cooperation, and shared European identity.