Historic Cities · France
Reims through the ages
Reims is the most populous city in the French department of Marne, and the 12th most populous city in France. The city lies 129 km (80 mi) northeast of Paris on the Vesle river, a tributary of the Aisne.
Reims in 1429
City of Coronations
This is Reims at the climax of a long royal ritual life: a midsummer city emptied and thronged at once for the Sacre of Charles VII, the Holy Ampulla brought from Saint-Remi, and the Maid's banner on the parvis. The walk shows the cathedral's west front and parvis, the Palace of Tau and Abbey of Saint-Remi, and the cloth halls, quays and timbered lanes where the town's wool and dyeing trades gather.
Dominated by the soaring stone towers and sculptured west front of Notre‑Dame de Reims, the city is a compact knot of steep, timber‑framed houses, tiled roofs and narrow streets folded toward the river Vesle. Pale weathered limestone, dark oak timbers and reddened clay tiles catch strong summer light; smoke and the odour of dyers rise from the quays. Bells and pennons animate the skyline while market stalls and cloth‑stretched yards give the lower town a busy, horizontal texture.
The route: 16 streets, squares and views
Road from Épernay → Porte de Mars → Pont over the Vesle → Quai de la Vesle → Halles aux Draps → Rue des Teinturiers → Grande Rue → Place du Marché → Timbered Market Lanes → Rue du Cloître → …
Step inside, 7 interiors
Drapers' Guild Hall · Timbered Quarter Tavern · High Nave of Notre‑Dame · Banqueting Hall of the Tau · Palace Newel Stair · Long Romanesque Nave · Dyers' Workshop
Planned from the Wikipedia record: Coronation of the French monarch.
Reims in 1900
Champagne Capital
Reims in 1900 is the wine city's high Belle Époque: the soot-dark Gothic cathedral presides over tram wires and elegant arcades while millions of bottles rest in chalk caverns beneath the streets. The walk passes cathedral forecourts and the great champagne houses, busy shopping streets and riverside quays, then out to the vineyards climbing the Montagne de Reims beyond the boulevards.
A dense low skyline of stone and slate is pierced by the soaring Gothic cathedral, its west front darkened by urban soot and crowned with carved angels. Broad boulevards and arcaded squares open between rows of five- and six-storey stone façades, while horse-drawn carts and electric tramcars thread narrow commercial streets. Cream-coloured bakeries and the crenellated façades of champagne firms sit above entrances into the white chalk crayères that honeycomb the ground beneath the city.
The route: 16 streets, squares and views
Montagne de Reims Vineyards → Gare de Reims → Place Drouet-d'Erlon → Rue de Vesle → Place Royale → Porte de Mars → Place de la République → Pommery Works → Place du Cardinal-Luçon → Cathedral West Front → …
Step inside, 8 interiors
Grand Arrival Hall · Champagne Tasting Salon · Biscuits Roses Oven Room · Chalk Crayère Stair · Riddling Cellar · Cathedral Nave · Salle du Tau · Basilica Nave
Planned from the Wikipedia record: Reims.
From the archive
Reims on paper: the old town as it was mapped.
A period plan or bird's-eye view of the old town, drawn between 1500 and 1850 — the streets this page's reconstructions walk. Public domain, with its source named.
Pourtraict de la ville, cité et université de Reims (bird's-eye view) engraved by Hugues Picart after Jacques Cellier
Walled bird's-eye plan showing curtain walls and bastions, principal gates, the cathedral, city street grid and the river with bridges.
1618 · inconnu. Versement et modifications ː G.Garitan · Wikimedia Commons
Public domain (plate dated 1618)
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