Reims

Before the Romans, Reims was the capital of the Remi, a Gaulish tribe that allied itself with Julius Caesar during his conquest of Gaul and kept the empire's favour afterwards. As Durocortorum the city became one of the great towns of Roman Gaul, with perhaps 30,000 to 50,000 people or more at its height; its third-century triumphal arch, the Porte de Mars, was the widest in the Roman world. The Vandals took the city in 406 and killed Bishop Nicasius, and Attila burned it in 451.

In 496 Bishop Remigius baptised Clovis, king of the Franks, at Reims, using oil said to have been brought from heaven by a dove. The story made the city the place where French kings were consecrated: Pope Stephen IV crowned Louis the Pious here in 816, and the archbishops of Reims came to rank first among the church peers of the realm. The schools founded by Archbishop Adalberon and the monk Gerbert, later Pope Silvester II, taught the liberal arts in the tenth century. The English held the city after the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, until Joan of Arc brought Charles VII to be crowned in the cathedral in 1429.

In August 1909 Reims hosted the first international aviation meeting. In 1914 German shelling and the fire that followed severely damaged the cathedral, and its ruins became a symbol in French wartime propaganda of attacks on European culture. After the war Andrew Carnegie paid for a new library, one of three he gave to front-line cities, built in the 1920s in Art Deco style. In the early hours of 7 May 1945 General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces at General Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims.

Reims calls itself la cité des sacres, the city of coronations, and that history still shapes its identity. The cathedral, the Palace of Tau and the Basilica of Saint-Remi were listed together by UNESCO in 1991, and every June the Fêtes johanniques recall Joan of Arc's entry into the city and the crowning of Charles VII. The city's heritage runs from Roman remains and Romanesque churches to Art Deco, and the Foujita Chapel adds a 1960s work by the Japanese-French painter Tsuguharu Foujita, who designed it and painted its frescoes.

Champagne gives Reims its other identity. Many of the grandes marques, the large Champagne houses, have their headquarters here, and the cellars and tunnels beneath its streets form a maze in the chalk. Several houses and cellars became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Champagne hillsides, houses and cellars in 2015.

The University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne, first founded in 1548, brings thousands of students to the city, and Sciences Po opened a campus in the former Jesuit College in 2010, bringing many international students. Stade de Reims was the outstanding French football club of the 1950s and early 1960s and reached two European Cup finals.

About 178,000 people lived in the commune in 2023, making Reims the thirteenth-largest commune in France and the largest in the Marne, though Châlons-en-Champagne is the department's prefecture. The urban unit had about 214,000 people and the wider area of attraction about 357,000.

The economy is driven by the wine and Champagne industries and by research in the bio-economy, alongside the university, the hospitals and the services of a regional centre. The Champagne trade employs many in the city and in the surrounding vineyards.

The tramway, opened in 2011, reshaped the main north–south routes through the city and links the centre with the TGV station at Bezannes. Residents shop at the Halles du Boulingrin and the Saturday market on Place de la République, gather on Place Drouet-d'Erlon in the evenings, and use the parks around the station and the Parc de Champagne at weekends. Districts near the station, such as Clairmarais, have been redeveloped in recent years.

Champagne is the drink of the city: Reims, with Épernay and Aÿ, is one of the centres of its production, and the wine ages in the chalk cellars beneath the streets. Most of the large houses offer tours and tastings, and wine shops facing the cathedral sell a wide range of bottles. The slopes of the Montagne de Reims, a wooded range of hills now protected as a regional natural park, are covered with the vineyards that supply it.

The biscuit rose de Reims, a crisp pink biscuit coloured with carmine, is the city's best-known sweet and is traditionally dipped in Champagne or in red wine from the Champagne hillsides. The Halles du Boulingrin, the covered market on Place de la République, and the Saturday market around it are the places for fish, meat, cheese and local produce.

Place Drouet-d'Erlon, the long pedestrian square in the city centre, is where most restaurants and bars are concentrated, from brasseries with terraces to pubs and burger bars.