Orléans

Orléans began as Cenabum, a stronghold of the Gaulish Carnutes on the Loire, where the river's trade made it an emporium. Julius Caesar destroyed it in 52 BC. In the late 3rd century AD it was renamed civitas Aurelianorum, perhaps after an emperor, and the name later became Orléans. Under the Merovingians it was the capital of a kingdom of its own. Louis VI was crowned in its cathedral in 1108, one of the few French kings crowned outside Reims.

Sited at the Loire's most northerly point, the closest to Paris, and holding one of the few bridges over the dangerous river, Orléans became one of medieval France's three richest cities with Paris and Rouen. On 8 May 1429 Joan of Arc took the fortified gatehouse of the Tourelles on the south bank and lifted the English siege. The university, founded in 1306, drew law students from across Europe, John Calvin among them. In the 17th and 18th centuries the river port refined sugar from the Caribbean and made vinegar from wine shipped up the Loire, and New Orleans was named after the regent, the Duke of Orléans.

In the Second World War the railway junction at Les Aubrais made it a German logistics hub, and American bombing caused heavy damage. Orléans was among the first French cities to rebuild, under a plan adopted in 1943. In 1969 a false rumour accusing Jewish shopkeepers of abducting women became the subject of Edgar Morin's study Rumour in Orléans. The university was refounded in 1966 and trams returned in 2000.

Joan of Arc is the city's figure. Orléans has honoured the Maid every spring since the 1430s, and the festival, listed on France's inventory of intangible cultural heritage in 2018, brings parades and sound-and-light shows in early May. Her equestrian statue stands in the Place du Martroi, another at the end of the George V Bridge, and a museum occupies a rebuilt house on the site of the one she stayed in.

The river is the other strand of identity. Every two years since 2003, the Festival de Loire gathers traditional flat-bottomed boats — gabares and futreaux with masts that fold down to pass under bridges — on the quays, celebrating the boatmen's trade that made the city. The Semaines musicales internationales d'Orléans, a classical music festival, has run since 1968, and the contemporary art collection of the Frac occupies one of the most unusual modern buildings in the region.

The writer Charles Péguy was born here and is remembered in a centre in a 15th-century mansion; the actress Marion Cotillard grew up in the city. In sport, Orléans Loiret Basket won the Coupe de France in 2010, and the football club US Orléans and a semi-professional rugby club have local followings. Like much of the Loire Valley, Orléans is reserved, courteous and proud of a long history close to the French crown.

About 116,000 people lived in the city in 2023, close to 300,000 in the Orléans Métropole and about 454,000 in the wider metropolitan area, the 20th largest in France. As the prefecture of the Loiret, public administration is a large employer, alongside the University of Orléans with more than 20,000 students, research centres in La Source, and the cosmetics and perfume industry of the region's Cosmetic Valley.

The city has twelve neighbourhoods in six sectors. The centre inside the boulevards mixes restored medieval streets with the stone blocks of the post-war reconstruction; Saint-Marceau, south of the river, is quieter and residential; La Source, the biggest district, combines the university and hospital with large housing estates. Parts of Argonne, Blossières, Saint-Marceau and La Source are priority areas for urban renewal, and parts of them are being redeveloped.

The rhythm is provincial — shops that close at lunchtime and a proper midday meal. Flood risk remains a concern on the low-lying south bank between the Loire and the Loiret, which is classed as a flood-risk zone.

Orléans vinegar, vinaigre d'Orléans, is the city's best-known product. River barges brought wine up the Loire, and stock that had turned during the slow journey was unloaded and made into vinegar; by the 18th century the city was famous for it. The traditional Orléans method lets wine ferment slowly in oak barrels in an airy cellar, drawing off and topping up over at least a year.

The other local speciality is cotignac, a thickened jelly made with quinces; in the early 17th century the agronomist Olivier de Serres noted that the most sought-after cotignac was that of Orléans. The sugar refineries of the 17th and 18th centuries — eleven of them at one point — also fed a trade in sweets and chocolate.

Beyond the city, the Loire Valley supplies the rest of the table. Goat's cheeses such as Sainte-Maure de Touraine and Selles-sur-Cher, rillettes of slow-cooked pork and river fish with beurre blanc appear on menus, and the Sologne to the south gives game, the valley's fields give asparagus, and the tarte Tatin, a tart of apples caramelised in butter and sugar, is popularly said to have been created at Lamotte-Beuvron in the Sologne. The wines of the valley, from Sancerre upstream to Vouvray and Chinon downstream, fill local lists.