Reims
Reims is the most populous city in the French department of Marne, and the 12th most populous city in France. The city lies northeast of Paris on the Vesle river, a tributary of the Aisne.
Founded by the Gauls, Reims became a major city in the Roman Empire. Reims later played a prominent ceremonial role in French monarchical history as the traditional site of the coronation of the kings of France. The royal anointing was performed at the Cathedral of Reims, which housed the Holy Ampulla of chrism allegedly brought by a white dove at the baptism of Frankish king Clovis I in 496. For this reason, Reims is often referred to in French as la cité des sacres.
Reims is recognized for the diversity of its heritage, ranging from Romanesque to Art-déco. Reims Cathedral, the adjacent Palace of Tau, and the Abbey of Saint-Remi were listed together as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991 because of their outstanding Romanesque and Gothic architecture and their historical importance to the French monarchy. Reims also lies on the northern edge of the Champagne wine region and is linked to its production and export.
History
Before the Roman conquest of northern Gaul, Reims had served as the Remi tribe's capital, founded. In the course of Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul, the Remi allied themselves with the Romans, and by their fidelity throughout the various Gallic insurrections secured the special favour of the imperial power. At its height in Roman times the city had a population in the range of 30,000–50,000 or perhaps up to 100,000. Reims was first called Durocortorum in Latin, which is hypothesized to derive from a Gaulish name meaning 'Door of Cortoro-'. The city later took its name from the Remi tribe. The modern French name is derived from the accusative case of the latter, Rēmos.Christianity had become established in the city by 260, at which period Saint Sixtus of Reims founded the Diocese of Reims. The consul Jovinus, an influential supporter of the new faith, repelled the Alamanni who invaded Champagne in 336, but the Vandals captured the city in 406 and slew Bishop Nicasius; in 451 Attila the Hun put Reims to fire and sword.
File:St Remy Bishop of Rheims begging of Clovis the restitution of the Sacred Vase taken by the Franks in the Pillage of Soissons.png|thumb|left|Saint Remigius, Bishop of Reims, begging Clovis of the restitution of the Sacred Vase taken by the Franks in the pillage of Soissons. From the manuscript of the History of the Emperors.
In 496—ten years after Clovis, King of the Salian Franks, won his victory at Soissons —Remigius, the bishop of Reims, baptized him using the oil of the sacred phial–purportedly brought from heaven by a dove for the baptism of Clovis and subsequently preserved in the Abbey of Saint-Remi. For centuries the events at the crowning of Clovis I became a symbol used by the monarchy to claim the divine right to rule.
Meetings of Pope Stephen II with Pepin the Short, and of Pope Leo III with Charlemagne, took place at Reims; here Pope Stephen IV crowned Louis the Debonnaire in 816. King Louis IV gave the city and countship of Reims to the archbishop Artaldus in 940. King Louis VII gave the title of duke and peer to William of Champagne, archbishop from 1176 to 1202, and the archbishops of Reims took precedence over the other ecclesiastical peers of the realm.
By the 10th century, Reims had become a centre of intellectual culture. Archbishop Adalberon, seconded by the monk Gerbert, founded schools which taught the classical "liberal arts".
The archbishops held the important prerogative of the consecration of the kings of France – a privilege which they exercised from the time of Philippe II Augustus to that of Charles X. The Palace of Tau, built between 1498 and 1509 and partly rebuilt in 1675, would later serve as the Archbishop's palace and as the residence of the kings of France on the occasion of their coronations, with royal banquets taking place in the Salle du Tau.
File:Ingres coronation charles vii.jpg|thumb|Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Joan of Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII, 1854
Louis VII granted the city a communal charter in 1139. The Treaty of Troyes ceded it to the English, who had made a futile attempt to take it by siege in 1360; French patriots expelled them on the approach of Joan of Arc, who in 1429 had Charles VII consecrated in the cathedral. Louis XI cruelly suppressed a revolt at Reims, caused in 1461 by the salt tax.
During the French Wars of Religion the city sided with the Catholic League, but submitted to King Henri IV after the battle of Ivry. At about the same time, the English College had been "at Reims for some years"."
The city was stricken with plague in 1635, and again in 1668, followed by an epidemic of typhus in 1693–1694. The construction of the Hôtel de Ville, Reims dates back to the same century.
The Place Royale was built in the 18th century. Some of the 1792 September Massacres took place in Reims.
In the invasions of the War of the Sixth Coalition in 1814, anti-Napoleonic allied armies captured and re-captured Reims. "In 1852, the Eastern Railways completed the Paris–Strasbourg main line with branch lines to Reims and Metz." In 1870–1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, the victorious Germans made it the seat of a governor-general and impoverished it with heavy requisitions. In 1874 the construction of a chain of detached forts started in the vicinity, the French Army having selected Reims as one of the chief defences of the northern approaches to Paris. In the meantime, British inventor and manufacturer Isaac Holden had opened plants at Reims and Croix, which "by the 1870s were producing almost 12 million kilograms of combed wool a year and accounted for 27 percent of all the wool consumed by French industry."
On 30 October 1908, Henri Farman made the first cross-country flight from Châlons to Reims. In August 1909 Reims hosted the first international aviation meet, the Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne. Major aviation personages such as Glenn Curtiss, Louis Blériot and Louis Paulhan participated.
Hostilities in World War I greatly damaged the city. German bombardment and a subsequent fire in 1914 did severe damage to the cathedral. The ruined cathedral became one of the central images of anti-German propaganda produced in France during the war, which presented it, along with the ruins of the Ypres Cloth Hall and the University Library in Louvain, as evidence that German aggression targeted cultural landmarks of European civilization. Since the end of World War I, an international effort to restore the cathedral from the ruins has continued.
During World War II, the city suffered additional damage. On the morning of 7 May 1945, at 2:41, General Eisenhower and the Allies received the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht in Reims. General Alfred Jodl, German Chief-of-Staff, signed the surrender at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force as the representative for German President Karl Dönitz.
The British statesman Leslie Hore-Belisha died of a cerebral haemorrhage while making a speech at the Hôtel de Ville, Reims in February 1957.
Administration
Reims functions as a subprefecture of the department of Marne, in the administrative region of Grand Est. Although Reims is by far the largest commune in its department, Châlons-en-Champagne is the prefecture. Reims co-operates with 142 other communes in the Communauté urbaine du Grand Reims.Demographics
Economy
Rue de Vesle is the main commercial street, traversing the city from southwest to northeast through the Place Royale. The economy of Reims is driven by the wine and Champagne industries and innovation in the bio-economic field.Architecture
is an example of French Gothic architecture.The Basilica of Saint-Remi, founded in the 11th century "over the chapel of St. Christophe where St. Remi was buried", is "the largest Romanesque church in northern France, though with later additions."
The Church of Saint-Jacques dates from the 13th to the 16th centuries. A few blocks from the cathedral, it stands in a neighbourhood of shopping and restaurants. The churches of Saint-Maurice, Saint-André, and Saint-Thomas also draw tourists.
The Protestant Church of Reims, built in 1921–1923 over designs by Charles Letrosne, is an example of flamboyant neo-Gothic architecture.
The Hôtel de Ville, erected in the 17th century and enlarged in the 19th, features a pediment with an equestrian statue of Louis XIII.
Narcisse Brunette was the architect of the city for nearly 50 years in the 19th century. He designed the Reims Manège and Circus, which "combines stone and brick in a fairly sober classical composition."
Examples of Art Deco in Reims include the Carnegie library.
The Foujita Chapel, built in 1965–1966 over designs and with frescos by Japanese–French artist Tsuguharu Foujita, has been listed as a monument historique since 1992.
Culture
Reims was a candidate in the bid to become the European Capital of Culture in 2028, however was eliminated in the preselection round.Museums
The Palace of Tau contains such exhibits as statues formerly displayed by the cathedral, treasures of the cathedral from past centuries, and royal attire from coronations of French kings.The Musée Saint-Remi, formerly the Abbey of Saint-Remi, contains tapestries from the 16th century donated by the archbishop Robert de Lenoncourt, marble capitals from the fourth century AD, furniture, jewellery, pottery, weapons and glasswork from the sixth to eighth centuries, medieval sculpture, the façade of the 13th-century musicians' House, remnants from an earlier abbey building, and also exhibits of Gallo-Roman arts and crafts and a room of pottery, jewellery and weapons from Gallic civilization, as well as an exhibit of items from the Palaeolithic to the Neolithic periods. Another section of the museum features a permanent military exhibition.
The Automobile Museum Reims-Champagne, established in 1985 by Philippe Charbonneaux, houses a collection of automobiles dating from 1903 to the present day. The museum has five collections: automobiles, motorcycles and two-wheelers, pedal cars, miniature toys, and enamel plaques.
The Museum of Fine Arts is housed in the former Abbey of Saint-Denis. Part of the former Collège des Jésuites has also become a contemporary art gallery: the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne.
The Museum of the Surrender is the building in which on 7 May 1945, General Eisenhower and the Allies received the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht.