Amiens

Amiens began as Samarobriva, "the bridge on the Somme", the main settlement of the Ambiani, one of the principal tribes of Gaul; the Romans called it Ambianum after them, and the name stuck. It grew where the river narrows below a chalk spur, and a network of channels powered textile mills in the Middle Ages. The Normans sacked it in 859 and 882; Louis VI recognised its commune in 1113, and in 1185 it passed to the French crown. The wealth of the medieval town paid for the cathedral, raised almost entirely between 1220 and about 1270 after a fire destroyed its Romanesque predecessor.

In 1597 Spanish soldiers seized the city and held it through a six-month siege until Henri IV took it back and built the citadel. In the 18th and 19th centuries Amiens was famous for its velvet, and in 1802 Britain and France signed the Treaty of Amiens here. In the 19th century the walls came down for boulevards, the railway arrived in 1848, and Prussian troops occupied it in 1870. Jules Verne settled here in 1871, stayed until his death in 1905 and sat on the city council for fifteen years.

Both world wars hit hard. The Battle of Amiens in August 1918 opened the Hundred Days Offensive that ended the war. German bombing and fire in May 1940 destroyed most of the centre, and Royal Air Force raids followed in June 1944 before British troops liberated the city on 31 August. Pierre Dufau's plan rebuilt it with wider streets, and Auguste Perret designed the station and the tower opposite. President Emmanuel Macron was born in Amiens.

The cathedral dominates the city's identity. John Ruskin called it Gothic "pure, authoritative, unsurpassable", and Viollet-le-Duc "the Parthenon of Gothic architecture"; its west front, with more than 3,000 statues, gargoyles and chimeras, is lit in its rediscovered medieval colours on winter and summer evenings. Jules Verne is the other great name, remembered in his house with a tower and the circus named after him.

Picard identity runs deep. Lafleur, a rod-and-string puppet who speaks Picard and whose weaknesses are drinking, eating and doing nothing, stars in the Chés Cabotans theatre in Saint-Leu, keeping alive a puppet tradition that was hugely popular in the 19th century. Each 15 August the Parc de la Hotoie hosts the finals of ballon au poing, a game for teams of six in which players strike the ball with a bound hand. The Christmas market is the largest in northern France, and the concert hall La Lune des Pirates and the Zénith host music through the year.

In sport, Amiens SC, finalist in the Coupe de France in 2001, last played in Ligue 1 in 2020; the Gothiques ice hockey club have been national champions twice, and the Spartiates have won the French American football title three times. Amiens has the largest Muslim community in Picardy, and a large student population gives the city a young profile.

About 136,000 people lived in Amiens in 2023, making it the largest city of the Somme and the second of Hauts-de-France after Lille. It lost the title of regional capital when Picardy merged into Hauts-de-France in 2016, but remains the prefecture, the seat of a court of appeal and home to a university of more than 31,500 students and one of the largest university hospitals in France. The 15–24 age group is far larger than the departmental average.

Public services and trade employ most people; industry, long tied to car parts and tyres, provides about one job in six, while the textile industry that made the city rich for centuries has almost disappeared. Amiens has tried since the 1990s to draw telecoms and internet businesses. The housing is distinctive: the amiénoise, a terraced brick house of one or more storeys, lines whole streets of the old suburbs.

The contrast between the restored centre and the high-rise estates of the north, which saw riots at intervals from the 1990s to 2012, is a long-running issue, and the northern districts have been extensively redeveloped. Daily routines are those of a provincial French city — a midday meal, café terraces on the quays of Saint-Leu in summer, and weekends in the hortillonnages or on the Picardy coast.

Amiens is known for several specialities. Macarons d'Amiens are small round biscuits of almond paste, eggs and honey, sometimes with apricot jam or vanilla, whose fame dates from the 16th century; tuiles amiénoises are curved chocolate and orange biscuits. Pâté de canard d'Amiens, duck pâté baked in pastry, is said to have been created in the city in 1643 and was already praised by Madame de Sévigné.

The savoury dishes are Picard. The ficelle picarde is a savoury crêpe rolled around a slice of ham and a creamed shallot duxelles and baked in cream under a layer of cheese, served as a starter or main course, and flamiche aux poireaux is a puff-pastry tart filled with leeks. The hortillonnages have supplied vegetables to the city's markets since the Middle Ages, and the Bay of Somme, downstream, provides salt-meadow lamb, cockles and samphire.

As elsewhere in the north, beer is the everyday drink, from the amber, malty bières de garde to local craft brews, and Maroilles, the cow's-milk cheese of the Thiérache, turns up baked in tarts. The terraces of the Quai Bélu and the Place du Don are where the city eats out in good weather.