Charleville-Mézières (Municipality, Ardennes, France)

Last modified: 2005-03-19 by ivan sache
Keywords: ardennes | charleville-mezieres |
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by António Martins

• Presentation of Charleville-Mézières
• Municipal flag of Charleville-Mézières

See also:

• France
• Ardennes (Department, France)

Presentation of Charleville-Mézières

The city of Charleville-Mézières (60,000 inhabitants, Carolomacériens; 108,000 inhabitants when including the outskirts), located 240 km north-east of Paris and close to the border with Belgium, is the préfecture of the department of Ardennes.
The current municipality of Charleville-Mézières was created in 1966 by the merging of the two cities of Charleville and Mézières and the incorporation of Mohon, Etion and Montcy-Saint-Pierre to the new municipality.

The Gallo-Roman city of Castricum was built on the site of Montcy-Saint-Pierre. It was trashed during the Great Invasions in the Vth century. A royal villa (estate) was built a few centuries later on the site of Charleville; in the IXth century, it was superseded by the city of Arches. King of Francia Occidentalis Charles le Chauve had a palace in Arches, where he received in 859 his nephew Lothaire, King of Lotharingia. The treaty of Verdun, signed in 843, made of the Meuse the border between France (Mézières, left bank) and Lotharingia (Arches, right bank), later incorporated into the German Empire.

The Gallo-Roman city of Maceriae (in Latin, rampart) was built inside a meander, on the left bank of the river Meuse. This was a strategic place on the Reims-Cologne Roman way, built in