Cambrai

Sister cities

• Kamp-Lintfort
• Gravesend
• Esztergom

History

Little is known with certainty of the beginnings of Cambrai. Camaracum or Camaraco, as it was known to the Romans, is mentioned for the first time on the Peutinger table in the middle of the 4th century. It became the main town of the Roman province of the Nervii, whose first Roman capital had been at Bagacum, present-day Bavay. In the middle of the 4th-century, Frankish raids from the north threatened Bavay and led the Romans to build forts along the Cologne to Bavay to Cambrai road, and thence to Boulogne. Cambrai thus occupied an important strategic position. In 430, the Salian Franks under the command of Clodio the Long-Haired took the town. In 509, Clovis undertook to unify the Frankish kingdoms by getting rid of his relatives. Cambrai began to grow from a rural market into a real city during the Merovingian times, a long period of peace when the bishoprics of Arras and Cambrai were first unified, probably owing to the small number of clerics left at the time, and were later transferred to Cambrai, an administrative centre for the region. Successive bishops, including Gaugericus (in French Géry), founded abbeys and churches to host relics, which contributed powerfully to giving Cambrai both the appearance and functions of a city. When the Treaty of Verdun in 843 split Charlemagne's empire into three parts, the county of Cambrai fell into Lothaire's kingdom. Upon the death of Lothair II, who had no heir, king Charles the Bald tried to gain control of his kingdom by having himself consecrated at Metz. Cambrai thus reverted, but only briefly, to the Western Frankish Realm. In 870 the town was destroyed by the Normans. In the Middle Ages the region around Cambrai, called Cambrésis, was a county. Rivalries between the count, who ruled the city and county, and the…

Geography

The town of Cambrai is in the southern part of the Nord Department, of which it is chef-lieu of the arrondissement. It belongs to the dense network of the cities of the area which are separated by a few tens of kilometres: Douai is away, Valenciennes is , Arras is and Saint-Quentin , all measured as the crow flies. The regional capital, Lille, is from Cambrai. Cambrai is not very far from several European capitals: Brussels is away, Paris is and London is . Cambrai was born and developed on the right bank of the Scheldt river, locally known as the Escaut. The river has its source in the department of Aisne, just a little over away. Cambrai is located on chalk bedrock of the Cretaceous period, which forms the northern boundary of the Paris Basin, between, to the east, the hills for Thiérache and Avesnois, the foothills of the , and northwest, the hills of Artois. It is at a point which is relatively lower than these two regions, called the "Cambrai threshold" or the "Bapaume threshold", which facilitates the passage between the south and the north. Bapaume (Artois) is above sea level, Avesnes-sur-Helpe (Avesnois) is at and Cambrai only . The Saint-Quentin canal, the Canal du Nord, the A1, A2 and A26 autoroutes all borrow all this passage between the basin of the Seine and the plains of the Nord department. The chalky subsoil allowed the digging of a network of cellars, tunnels and quarries under the city. The poor quality of the Cambrai chalk was reserved for use in the manufacture of lime or filling, and common constructions. For prestigious buildings, stone from the nearby villages of Noyelles-sur-Escaut, Rumilly or Marcoing was used. Cambrai is bordered in its western part, and to the north and the south, by the alluvial zones of the Scheldt Valley.…

Most-observed species

• Common Pipistrelle

  Pipistrellus pipistrellus (Schreber, 1774) · Mammalia
  31,142
• Nathusius's Bat

  Pipistrellus nathusii (Keyserling & Blasius, 1839) · Mammalia
  3,220
• Serotine Bat

  Eptesicus serotinus (Schreber, 1774) · Mammalia
  2,178
• Lesser noctule

  Nyctalus leisleri (Kuhl, 1817) · Mammalia
  864
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  824
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  705
• Common Chaffinch

  Fringilla coelebs Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  604
• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  553

Most recent

• M 3.3 — 2008-09-13
  3 km SSE of Florennes, Belgium
• M 2.6 — 2008-08-08
  1 km SSE of Boussu, Belgium
• M 3.2 — 2008-07-14
  1 km SW of Boussu, Belgium
• M 3.1 — 2005-02-27
  1 km NW of Libercourt, France
• M 2.5 — 2004-10-03
  0 km ESE of Maubray, Belgium
• M 2.5 — 2003-01-31
  1 km N of Tarcienne, Belgium