Overview
The city of Rouen occupies a classic situation on a loop in the river Seine, protected by a circle of low hills – not unlike that of Paris. The numerous islands in the river facilitated the construction of bridges, and the earliest Celtic settlement here was a trading place, called Ratumacos, meaning « the place of exchanges ». Although Rouen is 125 km from the sea, it is France’s fourth busiest port and Europe’s leading grain handler. One of its great advantages is rapid access to Paris by the motorway, and the port installations on the western edge of the city are impresive.
The town was badly damaged during the Second World War and the left bank has been reconstructed in modern concrete style. However the small area around the cathedral has been preserved and reconstructed with great flair and your walking tour will take you through a compact network of streets crowded with historical half timbered houses and splendid municipal buildings. The tranquility of the Aitre Saint Maclou contrasts with the bustling pedestrian shopping area and the astonishing memorial church to Joan of Arc. Old Rouen is a great place for pictures and your group will enjoy some free time to explore on their own.
After putting up some initial resistance, the local Celtic population soon settled down under the Roman occupation. The developing city was laid out in the typical Roman pattern along two perpendicular axes: the Decumanus and the Cardo. These still survive as the rue Grand Pont and its extensions and the rue du Gros Horloge, crossing the heart of the old town. At the beginning of the 4th C the Emperor Diocletian declared the city capital of a large province roughly corresponding to the area which was to become Normandy. In the 3rd C the city converted to Christianity and became a bishopric and the first cathedral was built on its present site in the 4th C. However the stability of the Pax Romana was coming to an end and, although the city was now surrounded by defensive walls, it was unable to withstand successive onslaughts, first of the Barbarians from the 5th C and later of the Vikings, who sailed up the Seine in their longboats and several times burned and sacked Rouen.
The Vikings had come to stay however and in 911 their chief Rollo was converted to Christianity after being thrown back from his attack on Chartres by the power of the holy relic kept there. King Charles the Simple gave him part of the territory which is now Normandy – land of the North men – together with the city of Rouen. The Dukes of Normandy established one of their residences in the city, which emerged as the capital of Normandy and an administrative and judicial centre. The city was also the most important religious centre at this time and was promoted to an Archbishopric. Trade expanded and, especially after the Norman Conquest of England, large quantities of English wool were imported for the flourishing textile industry.
The 13th C was a time of great prosperity for Rouen and the cathedral, which was then under construction, is the perfect symbol of medieval civic pride. The houses were half timbered using oak from the nearby forests. They had thatched roofs, which meant that every time there was a fire – and there were thirteen during the first half of the century – the results were catastrophic. Gradually the thatch was replaced with tiles.
The 14th C, on the other hand, was a disaster for Rouen as for most of Europe. Apart from two outbreaks of the Black Death and frightful floods, the city got caught up in the Hundred Years War. In 1416, after a seige lasting six months, Rouen was forced to surrender to the English who held it until 1449. During the occupation, Joan of Arc was put on trial and executed on the Place du Vieux Marche in 1431. After becoming French again the city entered a period of prosperity which was to last a hundred years, and the extensive building which took place bears witness to this economic success. The finest Flamboyant Gothic building is the Palais de Justice, inaugurated by Louis XII in 1506 and the last additions to the cathedral also date from this period.
Rouen suffered badly during the Wars of Religion since the city had a large Protestant population. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes many craftsmen and merchants left never to return and this, combined with a catastrophic outbreak of typhus reduced the population by 25%. Throughout the 18th C however Rouen remained an important commercial centre with cotton textiles replacing the former woollen industry. In the 19th and early 20th C industrialisation brought the construction of the docks and the railway and the expansion of the city onto the right bank.
The Walking Tour
Your Walking Tour should include:
- The Aitre Saint Maclou
- The Cathedral
- Rue du Gros Horloge
- Palais de Justice
- The Gros Horloge
- Place du Vieux Marche and Joan of Arc Memorial Church
When you get off the bus you will be right by the cathedral, but take them first to see the Aitre Saint Maclou (for directions, please see map). On the way you pass the Flamboyant Gothic church of St Maclou set in a pretty little square. You don’t have to take them inside, but pause to show them the unusual and splendid West facade which has five porches set in a semi circle like a fan. The intricate stonecarving is rather damaged but you can point out the elaborately carved wooden doors dating from the 16th C.
On the square, and along the rue Martainville, which you now take, are lots of antique shops selling heavy, highly polished Norman antique furniture and others offering traditional Rouen « faience» (earthenware). This is always expensive but it is a genuinely traditional product. The industry was founded in 1644 and flourished, particularly in the 18th C when the nobility was prohibited from using silver tableware and commissioned elaborate designs in faience to compensate.
Be careful not to miss the entrance, on your left, to the Aitre Saint Maclou – one of Rouen’s surprises. At the end of a short alley, a doorway to the right leads into a quiet cloister enclosed on all four sides by a low, half timbered buildings. Take a look at the carvings above the first level of windows and you will get a clue as to the original function of the place. Skulls and bones alternate with spades and grave digging implements, for this was once a charnel house, constructed on land acquired in the 14th C for a cemetery after an outbreak of plague. When, two hundred years later, the original graveyard was full, galleries were built on three sides containing ossuaries in the roof space. In the 17th C the fourth side of the square was completed by a school. In the following century the school took over the other buildings, which were radically modified. The open gallerieis on the ground floor were filled in and an upper storey added where the ossuary had been. Today the buildings, which are slightly dilapidated but mercifully untouched by modern development, appropriately house the School of Fine Arts. With its quiet central garden the place has a forgotten, timeless quality which makes it completely unique.
Leave the Aitre de Saint Maclou and walk back to the cathedral along the rue Saint Romain. This takes you past the wall of the Archbishop’s Palace. Look out for a ruined window opening which is all that remains of the hall in which Joan of Arc was tried and condemned in 1431. (Incidentaly you can get a spectacular photo of the cathedral spire through the empty stone tracery of the window).
After six months of uninterrupte success, culminating in the coronation of Charles VII in Reims cathedral in 1429 Joan’s fortunes began to turn. She was captured outside Compiegne in 1430 by the Burgundians who handed her over to the English in exchange for a large financial sum. She was brought to Rouen just before Christmas and held in the fortress, where she was interrogated. Her trial for heresey was led by the bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon and the entire minutes of the proceedings still exist, giving us a complete and accurate record of the judges’ questions and Joan’s patient and pertinent answers. The trial dragged on for three months and the English were becomming impatient. In the end Cauchon fixed up a spectacular « recantation ». Joan was led to the cemetery of St Ouen where, tied to a scaffold she publicly renounced her heresies and promised to revert to wearing women’s clothing. However, when she returned to prison her guards had hidden her clothes and gave her men’s attire instead. This was used as the pretext for her public execution on the Place du Marche, where she was burned alive at the stake on 30th May. Her ashes and, according to legend her heart, which had not been consumed by the flames, were thrown into the Seine.
Twenty nine yers later, Charles VII realised that the time had come to rehabilitate the girl to whom he owed everything and whom he had done nothing to save from the flames. A solemn re-trial was organised in the same hall of the Archbishop’s Palace and the official rehabilitation was officially declared in 1456. In 1920 Joan of Arc was proclaimed a saint and the patron of France.
Continue along the street which is lined with medieval half timbered houses, to the Place de la Cathedrale.
Rouen cathedral, constructed between the 12th and 16th C, is an immense and complex example of the entire development of the Gothic style. The West facade, smothered in bas reliefs, sculptures, pinnacles, tracery and arches should look vaguely familiar to your group if they have seen Monet’s paintings in the Orsay Museum. Monet lived for a few months in an appartment opposite the cathedral and set up easels in each of his three windows on which he simultaneously painted views of the facade. In all he created around thirty paintings, which are studies, not so much of the cathedral itself, but of Monet’s lifelong fascination with light effects. In fact if you happen to have a postcard of one of his pictures with you, it is amazing to see how his theory really does work. Instead of painstaking ly reproducing every minute detail, the artist seems to dissolve the stonework into shimmering colour, and encourages your mind’s eye to recreate the three dimensional facade in an extraordinarily interactive process.
Two massive square towers flank the facade, the left hand one (St Romain) is the oldest, built in the 12th C in early Gothic style. The Butter Tower on the right was built in the 15th C in Flamboyant Gothic style and is so called since it was apparently financed by alms donated during Lent by people who couldn’t bear to give up butter!
The spectacular soaring spire which defines the skyline of Rouen was cast in the 19th C to replace the 16th C wooden one which had been destroyed by fire. Flaubert called it « the extravagant endeavour of some freakish ironmonger » but it certainly adds an exclamation point to this enormous and disparate building.
Stepping inside, you are struck by the simplicity and harmony of the interior. The immense height of the nave is emphasised by the repetition of columns along the eleven four-storey bays. Encourage the group to walk around on their own – everything of interest is very well explained in English. Tell them to look out for the tomb of Richard the Lionheart and Rollo, the first Viking Lord of Normandy, both of which are in the South Aisle, and meet them again outside to continue your walk.
Across the cathedral square is a splendind building, Gothic in construction but with typically renaissance decorative elements – pillasters, arabesques, cupids and medallions between the windows of the mezzanine floor. It was built in the early 1500’s as the Rouen Tax Office and now houses the Office de Tourisme. The hideous chunk of concrete and glass on the North side of the square is a less successful example of town planning. Built in the mid 1970’s as a conference centre, it is typical of the uncompromising modernism of that period under the mandate of Mayor Jean Lecannuet (see below). The centre covers part of the site of another renaissance building, the Chamber of Accounts, which was badly damaged in 1944. If you peer through the glass doors you can see part of the facade, as it were pickled in aspic on the right of the entrance hall. The effect is particularly surreal at night when the modern building seems to be devouring its predecessor.
Take the pedestrian rue du Gros Horloge which is full of shops and cafes, but turn right down the rue Thouret to have a look at the Palais de Justice. This spendid late medieval building was begun in 1499 to house the Normandy Parliament and the Exchequer. The oldest part is the left hand wing; the central portion was added in 1510 and the neo Gothic right hand wing was built in the 19th C. Despite serious damage during the war, the ensemble is a spectacular example of late Gothic ornamentation, bristling with pinnacles, statues, buttresses and arches.
During work in the courtyard in 1976 the foundations of an early 12th C building were discovered. This site had previously formed part of the Jewish ghetto until the Jews were expelled in 1306 and the building has been identified as a Rabbinical school or possibly a synagogue. It is the oldest Jewish building yet discovered in France.
Return to the rue du Gros Horloge. The magnificent Renaissance structure housing the clock and spanning the street like a gate was built between 1527 and 1529. Beneath the clock face is an opening in which different figures appear, representing the day of the week. The globe above no longer functions but used to indicate the phases of the moon. The vault of the archway is richly decorated with a bas relief of the Good Shepherd among his flock. The sheep theme is continued in the city arms depicted at the centre, which no doubt symbolise the wool trade – the foundation of the city’s wealth.
Continue throught the arch onto the astonishing Place du Vieux Marche. Here the blending of the ancient heritage of Rouen with its modern vocation is at its most successful . When Joan of Arc was canonised in 1920 the government promised to errect a memorial to her, however nothing was really done until 1969, when the new mayor Jean Lecannuet entrusted the project to Louis Arretche (the architect responsible for the reconstruction of St Malo). Arretche completely redesigned the square, creating a memorial church, whose roof, the sweeping broken lines of which are reminiscient of flames, is linked to a « Gallery of Remembrance » and a small traditional covered market. Outside the church he set the rather sentimental statue of the Maid, which had been presented to Rouen in 1926, and marked the exact site of the stake with a tall aluminum cross. The interior of the church is a truly remarkable space, further enhanced by the incorporation of a series of thirteen renaissance stained glass windows from the church of St Vincent which was completely demolished during the air raids of 1944.
This is the end of your walking tour and you can give free time for the group to explore on thier own. If it is lunch time there are plenty of places on the square or they could buy a picnic in the market and eat it under the trees.
Three Famous Rouennais
Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
Born in the rue de la Pie, just off the Place du Vieux Marche, he was educated by the Jesuits and trained as a lawyer. As such he used to present his cases in the Palais de Justice. He achieved fame as a playwright in Paris from 1636 and in 1662 left Rouen to spend the rest of his life in the capital and at the court of Versailles. His earliest success was with « le Cid », which was rapidly followed by « Horace », « Cinna » and « Polyeucte » . His excessively virtuous heroes and heroines and strict adherence to the classical unities as prescribed by French literary taste of the time can make his work seen indigestible to modern Anglo Saxons, but he is one of the giants of French literature and his works provide a fascinating mirror of court values at the dawn of the 18th C. Addicts can visit the Corneille museum, in the house where he was born. His study has been reconstructed and there is also a model of the square as it was at the time of Joan of Arc.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Flaubert spent his youth at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, where his father was a surgeon, and he too has a museum which displays both his childhood home and an impressive array of ferocious 19th C medical instruments. Flaubert is the master of French language and his novels and stories are examples of the best French written style. « Madame Bovary » is set in and around Rouen and admirably evokes the complacent and censorious 19th C society which Emma Bovary found so suffocating.
Jean Lecannuet (1920-1993)
Lecannuet was mayor of Rouen from 1968 until his death 25 years later. He also had a long parliamentary career and was a Minister from 1974-77. He was a Senator for 30 years and president of the Regional Assembly for 19 years. However a mayor in France has extensive powers and it was in this capacity that the Rouennais pinned their hopes on him when he was elected in 1968. Rouen was still painfully rebuilding itself after the wartime distruction and under Lecannuet a sweeping programme of urban development and renewal was soon underway. A new bridge was built, together with expressways and tunnels; the commercial and business district of St Sever on the left bank was developed and the historic centre rehabilitated. Lecannuet was an ardent believer in the European Union and the vocation of Rouen as a regional capital strategically well placed within Europe. Although some of his urban planning was – and still is – criticised for insensitivity to its environment, he was greatly respected and admired by the majority of his citizens.