Rouen

Commune of Rouen
SaintMaclou.JPG
Location
Rouen (France)
Rouen
Rouen
Administration
Country France
Region Haute-Normandie (capital)
Department Seine-Maritime (préfecture)
Arrondissement Rouen
Canton Chief town of 7 cantons
Intercommunality Communauté de l'agglomération Rouennaise
Mayor Valérie Fourneyron (PS)
(2008-2014)
Statistics
Elevation 2 m–152 m
(avg. 10 m)
Land area¹ 21.38 km²
Population²
(1999)		 106,592
 - Density 4,986/km²
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code 76540/ 76000
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
2 Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.
France

Rouen (pronounced [ʁwɑ̃] in French) is the historical capital city of Normandy, in northwestern France on the River Seine, and currently the capital of the Haute-Normandie (Upper Normandy) région. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe, Rouen was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages. It was one of the capitals of the Anglo-Norman dynasties, which ruled both England and large parts of modern France from the 11th century to the 15th century. It was in Rouen where Joan of Arc was burnt in 1431. People from Rouen are called Rouennais.

The population of the metropolitan area (in French: aire urbaine) at the 1999 census was 518,316 inhabitants and 541,410 inhabitants at the 2007 estimate. The city proper has an estimated population of 109,000 in 2007.

Contents

Administration

Rouen is the capital of the Haute-Normandie (Upper Normandy) région, as well as a commune and the préfecture (capital) of the Seine-Maritime département.

Rouen and 36 suburban communes of the metropolitan area form the Community of Agglomeration of Rouen Haute-Normandie, with 393,621 inhabitants in it at the 1999 census. In descending order of population, the largest of these suburbs are Sotteville-lès-Rouen, Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, Le Grand-Quevilly, Le Petit-Quevilly, and Mont-Saint-Aignan, each with a population exceeding 20,000 inhabitants.

History

Rouen was founded by the Gaulish tribe of the Veliocassi, who controlled a large area in the lower Seine valley. They called it Ratumacos;[1] the Romans called it Rotomagus.[2] Roman Rotomagus was the second city of Gallia Lugdunensis after Lugdunum (Lyon) itself. Under the reorganization of Diocletian, Rouen was the chief city of the divided province Gallia Lugdunensis II and reached the apogee of its Roman development, with an amphitheatre and thermae of which foundations remain. In the fifth century it became the seat of a bishopric, though the names of early bishops are purely legendary[3] and later a capital of Merovingian Neustria.

From their first incursion in the lower valley of the Seine in 841,[4] the Normans overran Rouen; from 912 Rouen was the capital of the Duchy of Normandy and residence of the dukes until William the Conqueror established his castle at Caen.

In 1150 Rouen received its founding charter, permitting self-government. During the twelfth century Rouen was the site of a yeshiva; at that time, about 6,000 Jews lived in the town, comprising about 20% of the population, in addition to a large number of Jews scattered about another 100 communities in Normandy. The well-preserved remains of the yeshiva were discovered in the 1970s under the Rouen Law Courts, and the community has begun a project to restore them.

In 1200 a fire destroyed a part of the old cathedral and the present Gothic mainworks cathedral of Rouen were begun. On June 24, 1204 Philippe Auguste entered Rouen and definitively annexed Normandy to the French Kingdom. He demolished the Norman castle and replaced it with his own, the Château Bouvreuil, built on the site of the Gallo-Roman amphitheatre.[5] A textile industry developed, based on wool imported from England, for which the cities of Flanders and Brabant were constantly competitors, and finding its market in the Champagne fairs. Rouen depended for its prosperity also on the river traffic of the Seine, of which it enjoyed a monopoly that reached as far upstream as Paris. Wine and wheat were exported to England, as tin and wool received in return. In the fourteenth century urban strife threatened the city: in 1291 the mayor was assassinated and noble residences in the city were pillaged. Philip IV reimposed order and suppressed the city's charter and the lucrative monopoly on river traffic; but he was quite willing for the Rouennais to repurchase their old liberties in 1294. In 1306 he decided to expel the Jewish community of Rouen, then numbering some five or six thousands. In 1389 another urban revolt of the underclass occurred, the Harelle; it was part of widespread rebellion in France that year[6] and was suppressed with the withdrawal of Rouen's charter and river-traffic privileges once more.

During the Hundred Years' War, on January 19, 1419, Rouen surrendered to Henry V of England, who annexed Normandy once again to the Plantagenet domains. But Rouen did not go quietly: Alan Blanchard hung English prisoners from the walls, for which he was summarily executed; Canon of Rouen Robert de Livet became a hero for excommunicating the English king, resulting in de Livet's imprisonment for five years in England. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen on May 30, 1431 in this city, where most inhabitants supported the duke of Burgundy, Joan of Arc's king enemy. The king of France Charles VII recaptured the town in 1449.

The city was heavily damaged during World War II on D-day and its famed cathedral was almost destroyed by Allied bombs. During the Nazi occupation, the German Navy had its headquarters located in a chateau on the École Supérieure de Commerce de Rouen campus.

Main sights

Rouen Cathedral.
The entrance to the Cathedral.
The Church of Jeanne d'Arc.
Abbey church of Saint-Ouen (chevet).
Medieval house.
Rue St-Romain on a rainy day.

Rouen is known for its Notre Dame cathedral, with its Tour de Beurre (butter tower). The cathedral was the subject of a series of paintings by Claude Monet, some of which are exhibited in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

The Gros Horloge is an astronomical clock (dating back to the16th century) though the movement is considerably older (1389). It is located in the Gros Horloge street.

Other famous structures include the Gothic Church of Saint Maclou (15th century); the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, where Joan of Arc was brought in 1431 to be threatened with torture (contrary to popular belief, she was not imprisoned there); the Church of Saint Ouen (12th–15th century); the Palais de Justice, which was once the seat of the Parlement (French court of law) of Normandy and the Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics which contains a splendid collection of faïence and porcelain for which Rouen was renowned during the 16th to 18th centuries.

Rouen is noted for its surviving half-timbered buildings.

There are many museums in Rouen: Musée des beaux-arts de Rouen, an art museum with pictures of well-known painters such as Monet, Musée maritime fluvial et portuaire, a museum on the history of the port of Rouen and navigation, Musée des antiquités, an art and history museum with antic or gothic works, Musée de la céramique, Musée Le Secq des Tournelles...

In the centre of the Place du Vieux Marché is the modern church of Saint Joan of Arc. This is a large, modern structure which dominates the square. The form of the building represents the pyre on which Joan of Arc was burnt.

Rouen was also home to the French Grand Prix, hosting the race at the nearby Rouen-Les-Essarts track sporadically between 1952 and 1968.

Transport

Rouen is served by a light rail system opened in 1994, the Métro. It branches into two lines out of a metro tunnel running through the city center. Rouen is also served by buses run in conjunction with the tramway by the local transport authority, Metrobus.

Education

Higher education in Rouen is provided by University of Rouen, École Supérieure de Commerce de Rouen, located at nearby Mont-Saint-Aignan, INSA ROUEN and ESIGELEC.

Births

Rouen was the birthplace of:

Twin towns

Rouen is twinned with:

In fiction and popular culture

Fine art

Rouen Cathedral, Full Sunlight, by Claude Monet, 1894

The Rouen Cathedral was the subject for a series of paintings by the Impressionist painter Claude Monet, who painted the same scene at different times of the day. Two paintings are in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; one is in the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade. The estimated value of one painting is over $40 million.

Literature

Music

The British band Supergrass named their fifth studio album Road to Rouen, punning on an Anglicised version of the city name's pronunciation.

Film

In the 2001 movie A Knight's Tale, the protagonist William Thatcher played by Heath Ledger poses as a noble and competes in his first jousting tournament at Rouen.

Computer games

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Ratu- is not well explained; -macus, magus is a familiar toponymic suffix signifying "plain".
  2. ↑ As in Ammianus Marcellinus and the Notitia dignitatum; other variants: Ratomagos (Ptolemy, Geography), Ratomagos (Antonine Itinerary, Tabula Peutingeriana).
  3. ↑ Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. "Diocese of Rouen" records that Saint Mellon[ius] was credited with being the first bishop until a Nicaise, linked to Denis of Paris was inserted to precede him: see Diocese of Rouen.
  4. ↑ Recorded in the chronicle of Fontenelle Abbey.
  5. ↑ It was destroyed at the end of the fifteenth century, its stones quarried for other construction, except for the tower associated with Joan of Arc, restored by Viollet-le-Duc.
  6. ↑ See Popular revolt in late medieval Europe for broad context.

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