Arras

The Belgic Atrebates founded the town on the hill of Baudimont and called it Nemetocenna; under the Romans, as Nemetacum, it became by the 4th century a centre of crafts and trade known for its textiles. Saint Vaast became its first bishop in 499, and in 667 the Abbey of Saint-Vaast was founded; the medieval town grew around it as a grain market. By the 11th century Arras led the wool trade and was a hub of banking, with a commercial charter from the French crown in 1180, and its cloth merchants made it a centre of the trouvère poets, including Jean Bodel and Adam de la Halle.

Its ownership passed between Flanders, Burgundy, the Habsburgs and France. The Congress of Arras in 1435 broke the Burgundian alliance with England; in 1477 Louis XI took the town by assault, razed its walls, expelled its people and briefly renamed it Franchise. The Union of Arras of 1579 bound the Catholic provinces of the Low Countries to Philip II. Arras stayed under Spanish rule until the French captured it in 1640 and kept it in 1659. During the Revolution the Arras lawyer Maximilien Robespierre rose to national power, and in 1793–94 the Terror brought some 400 executions to the town.

In the First World War the front line ran about 10 kilometres away. The town hall burned in October 1914, the belfry fell later that month and the cathedral in 1915; in 1917 New Zealand tunnellers linked the medieval quarries to shelter British troops for the Battle of Arras. Three-quarters of the town had to be rebuilt. In May 1940 a British counterattack here briefly checked the German advance; during the occupation 218 Resistance members were shot at the citadel, and the Guards Armoured Division liberated Arras on 3 September 1944.

Arras's identity rests on its squares: the 155 Flemish-Baroque houses of the Grand'Place and the Place des Héros, rebuilt after 1918, form an ensemble that has few equals in Europe, and the belfry and the citadel are both on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The town has one of the highest densities of protected historic buildings in France, and it calls itself the cradle of Picard literary culture for its medieval trouvères.

Remembrance is woven into daily life. The Canadian memorial at Vimy, the Arras Memorial and the Carrière Wellington tunnels bring visitors from the Commonwealth, and on the centenary of Vimy Ridge in 2017 the mayor thanked Canadians, Australians, Britons, New Zealanders and South Africans for their role. Arras is twinned with Ipswich and has a Place d'Ipswich, marked by a red British telephone box.

The calendar is lively for a town of its size. The Main Square Festival has brought major international acts to Arras each July since 2004, now in the citadel; the Arras Film Festival in November is devoted to French and European cinema; and the Christmas market, the biggest north of Paris, fills the Grand'Place with stalls, a carousel and an ice rink, selling chocolate rats and heart-shaped Cœurs d'Arras.

About 43,000 people lived in Arras in 2023, making it the second town of the Pas-de-Calais after Calais. The urban community groups about 110,000 people in 46 communes. The population is young — a third of people in the agglomeration are under 25 — thanks in part to the university.

As the prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais, Arras has many public-sector jobs, and it sits at the heart of the largest agri-food business area north of Paris. With the TGV putting Paris under an hour away and Lille close by, it lies within the orbit of the Lille metropolitan area and the old mining towns just to the north.

The town is compact, with the rebuilt centre surrounded by residential faubourgs, and the two squares, laid out for markets, remain the stage for café terraces and festivals. Its chalk subsoil — the source of the stone that once earned it the nickname of the White Town — still runs beneath the streets as cellars and tunnels.

The food of Arras is that of Artois and French Flanders. Carbonade flamande, a stew made with beer and mustard and sometimes thickened with gingerbread, and the welsh, cheddar melted over toasted bread, are brasserie staples, and chips from a roadside friterie are close to a regional emblem. Maroilles, the cow's-milk cheese of the Thiérache, is baked into tarts, and endives, known as chicons, are baked with ham and béchamel.

The town's own treats are best known from the Christmas market: chocolate rats and Cœurs d'Arras, heart-shaped biscuits. The town sits at the heart of the largest agri-food business area north of Paris.

Beer is the everyday drink, from the bières de garde of the north, matured after bottling, to local brews sold at the Christmas stalls, and genièvre, a juniper spirit, is the traditional liquor of the region, once added to morning coffee. The arcaded cafés and brasseries of the two squares are where the town eats out.