Saint-Quentin (; ; ) is a city in the Aisne department, Hauts-de-France, northern France. It has been identified as the Augusta Veromanduorum of antiquity. It is named after Saint Quentin of Amiens, who is said to have been martyred there in the 3rd century.

Administration

Saint-Quentin is a sub-prefecture of Aisne. Although Saint-Quentin is by far the largest city in Aisne, the capital is the third-largest city, Laon.

Mayors

The mayor of Saint-Quentin is Frédérique Macarez,

thumb|Ruins in Saint-Quentin during the [[World War I|First World War.]]

The First World War hit Saint-Quentin very hard. In September 1914, the city was overrun; it endured a harsh occupation. From 1916, it lay at the heart of the war zone, because the Germans had integrated it into the Hindenburg Line. After the evacuation of the population in March, the town was systematically looted and industrial equipment removed or destroyed. The fighting destroyed it: 80% of buildings (including the Basilica of Saint-Quentin) were damaged.

Despite national support, the reconstruction process was long, and the city struggled to regain its pre-1914 dynamism. The 1911 population of 55,000 was achieved again only in the mid-1950s, in the context of general economic expansion. This prosperity continued until the mid-1970s, when the French textile industry began to suffer through competition from developing countries.

Climate

Population

Culture

Monuments

  • Basilica of Saint-Quentin, built in the 12th–15th century. Heavily damaged in World War I, the vaults, windows and roofs have been restored.
  • Hôtel de Ville (town hall), built between 1331 and 1509 in a gothic style. L'hôtel de ville of Saint-Quentin is famous for its peal of 37 bells. It was modified in the 19th century and heavily restored in 1926 in Art Déco style.
  • The municipal theatre Jean-Vilar, built in 1844.
  • The city has several beguinages, dating from the middle ages.
  • The Fervaques Palace: built between 1897 and 1911, it is the home of the High Court.
  • The Porte des Canonniers, a 17th-century city gate

Museums

  • Butterflies' Museum which has a collection of more than 600,000 insects, displaying 20,000 of them
  • Antoine Lecuyer Museum which owns the largest collection of Maurice Quentin de La Tour's pastels
  • Academic Society, archaeologic museum Société Académique de Saint-Quentin

Transport

The Gare de Saint-Quentin is the railway station, offering connections to Paris, Reims, Amiens, Lille and several regional destinations. The A26 motorway connects Saint-Quentin with Reims and Calais, the A29 with Amiens.

Personalities

  • Viviane Adjutor, basketball player
  • Alexandre Avez (1858–1896), politician
  • François-Noël Babeuf (1760–1797), known as Gracchus Babeuf, political agitator and journalist of the revolutionary period
  • Quentin-Claude Bendier (died 1677), scholar and bibliophile
  • Anthony Benezet, American abolitionist
  • Xavier Bertrand (born 1965), former Minister of Labour, Social Relations, Family and Solidarity in François Fillon's second government, conservative
  • Charles de Bouelles (1479–1567), philosopher, mathematician and linguist
  • Édouard Lucien Briquet (1854–1905) (engineer, left Paris under siege, going to work on the construction of the Trans-Saharan Railroad, in the 1870s. He moved to Brazil in 1883, working on several railroads in the interior of the country.
  • William Cliff, inventor of machine-woven tulle
  • Félix Davin (1807–1836), poet and journalist
  • Marc Delmas (1885–1931), Expressionist composer and biographer
  • Dudo of Saint-Quentin (born 965), historian
  • Antoine Francisque (1570–1605), lutenist and composer
  • Jules Gallay (1822–1897), lawyer and music historian
  • Rudy Gobert (born 1992), professional basketball player for the Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA; 4x Defensive Player of the Year
  • Kafetien Gomis (born 1980), athlete
  • Maïa Hirsch (born 2003), basketball player drafted by the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA in 2023.
  • Jean-Marie Lefèvre (born 1953), modernist and minimalist poet
  • Jean Leune (1889–1944), war correspondent, writer, military officer, and member of the French Resistance
  • Jeanne-Marie de Maille (1331–1414), saint
  • Étienne Mendy (born 1969), footballer
  • Jean Louis Marie Poiret (1755–1834), botanist and explorer
  • Charles Rogier (1800–1885), Belgian statesman
  • Philippe Taquet (1940–2025), paleontologist
  • Andre Trocme, pacifist Protestant church leader
  • Yves Velan (1925–2017), Swiss writer
  • Alexis Yetna, basketball player

Artists

  • Pierre Berton (16th century), known as "Pierre de Saint-Quentin", stonecutter
  • Mathieu (de) Bléville, born in Saint-Quentin at the beginning of the 16th century, painter on glass
  • Ulysse Butin (1838–1883), painter
  • John Cross, (1819–1861), English painter who studied at the Saint-Quentin School of Design
  • Benoît Delépine (1958–), scriptwriter, actor
  • Michel Dorigny (1617–1665), painter and printmaker, professor at the Painting Academy of Paris
  • Delphine Gleize (1973–), film director
  • Paul Guiramand, (1926–2007), painter and winner of the grand prix de Rome in 1953
  • Édouard Hippolyte Margottet (1848–1887), painter
  • Maurice Quentin de La Tour (1704–1788), pastellist, official portrait painter to Louis XV, benefactor of the city (founder of the Maurice Quentin de La Tour School of Design)
  • Arthur Midy (1887–1944), painter
  • Amédée Ozenfant (1886–1966), leader of Purism, an avant-garde movement of the 1920s.
  • Jean-Christophe Paré, (1957–) dancer and teacher
  • Julie-Marie Parmentier (1981–), actress
  • Maurice Pillard dit Verneuil, (1869–1942), Art Nouveau illustrator

French sartorial heritage

The city was a pivotal centre of mulquinerie.

Incidents

On 30 March 2013 five children between the ages of two and ten, were killed in a house fire in the city.

Their parents had recently separated and their father was hosting the children at his new home for the first time for the weekend, as they had been spending most of their time with their mother. At 10:30pm local time on Saturday 30 March the fire started via an unknown cause. The children's father, alongside neighbours, made desperate attempts to save the children, but by the time the emergency services arrived, it was too late. The building was considered "too dangerous to enter" and the bodies of the five children were discovered once the fire was extinguished.

The children's father was seriously burned in a failed attempt to save his children's lives and jumped through a window to safety. He was hospitalised and wasn't informed until later on Sunday that his children had died. [https://www.midilibre.fr/2013/03/31/cinq-enfants-de-2-a-10-ans-decedes-dans-l-incendie-d-une-maison-a-saint-quentin,669767.php][https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21986435]

Twin towns and sister cities

Saint-Quentin is twinned with:

  • Kaiserslautern, Germany
  • Rotherham, Yorkshire, England
  • San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain
  • Tongzhou (Beijing), China

See also

  • Battle of St. Quentin (disambiguation)
  • Communes of the Aisne department
  • Augusta Viromanduorum

<gallery>

File:St Quentin Basilique.JPG|The Basilica

File:Saint Quentin Basilica, 10-12-2011 (1).JPG|The Basilica with renovations to front entrance

File:ST QUENTIN - La gare.JPG|The Railway Station

File:Felix-DAVIN.jpg|Félix Davin (1807–1836), poet and journalist

File:Façade de l'ancien cinéma Le Carillon .jpg|Facade of the old Carillon cinema

</gallery>

References

  • Official website
  • Official website of Saint-Quentin tourism office
  • Historical footage of Saint-Quentin in World War I, europeanfilmgateway.eu