Reims

Sister cities

• Salzburg
• Canterbury
• Nagoya
• Brazzaville
• Florence
• Aachen
• Kutná Hora
• Arlington County

History

Christianity had become established in the city by 260, at which period Saint Sixtus of Reims founded the Diocese of Reims (which would be elevated to an archdiocese around 750). The consul Jovinus, an influential supporter of the new faith, repelled the Alamanni who invaded Champagne in 336, but the Vandals captured the city in 406 and slew Bishop Nicasius; The city was stricken with plague in 1635, and again in 1668, followed by an epidemic of typhus in 1693–1694. The construction of the dates back to the same century. The Place Royale was built in the 18th century. Some of the 1792 September Massacres took place in Reims. In the invasions of the War of the Sixth Coalition in 1814, anti-Napoleonic allied armies captured and re-captured Reims. "In 1852, the Eastern Railways completed the Paris–Strasbourg main line with branch lines to Reims and Metz." In 1870–1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, the victorious Germans made it the seat of a governor-general and impoverished it with heavy requisitions. On 30 October 1908, Henri Farman made the first cross-country flight from Châlons to Reims. In August 1909 Reims hosted the first international aviation meet, the . Major aviation personages such as Glenn Curtiss, Louis Blériot and Louis Paulhan participated. Hostilities in World War I greatly damaged the city. German bombardment and a subsequent fire in 1914 did severe damage to the cathedral. The ruined cathedral became one of the central images of anti-German propaganda produced in France during the war, which presented it, along with the ruins of the Ypres Cloth Hall and the University Library in Louvain, as evidence that German aggression targeted cultural landmarks of European civilization. Since the end of World War I, an international effort to restore the…

Most-observed species

• House Sparrow

  Passer domesticus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  1,276
• Great Tit

  Parus major Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,118
• Eurasian Blackbird

  Turdus merula Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,062
• Common Chaffinch

  Fringilla coelebs Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  1,010
• Eurasian Blue Tit

  Cyanistes caeruleus (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  996
• Common Wood-Pigeon

  Columba palumbus Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  932
• Eurasian Collared-Dove

  Streptopelia decaocto (Frivaldszky, 1838) · Aves
  746
• European Robin

  Erithacus rubecula (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  667