Amiens Things to Do

To the east of Amiens is the city of Peronne where we visited the Historial de la Grande Guerre (Historial Museum of the Great War). I didn't think this museum was at interesting as the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Belgium but it is worth a stop if you are interested in WWI history. The museums consists of display cases with war memorabilia, short films and some documents and displays with uniforms and supplies that the men would have had during the Battle of the Somme. There's also a display of Otto Dix drawings and a movie which I didn't watch. The display cases are trilingual-English, French and German.

Open every day from 10 am to 6 pm, closed every year from mid-December to mid-January. Admission is Adults: 7.50 €, over 60: 6.20 €, children (6-18 years old), veterans, teachers, students, employment seekers: 3.80 €, Family pass (2 adults and up to 2 children): 20 €

Our hotel had a Visitor's Guide to the Battlefields on their brochure table listing the many sites you can visit from the Battlefields of the Somme during WWI. The British front was between the cities of Albert and Peronne to the east of Amiens and there is a Circuit of Rememberence between the two cities. The guide is very good, it gives a history of the area and lists the sites as exceptional, very interesting, interesting or of secondary interest. We didn't have all day so we picked just one, the Historial of the Great War in Peronne. If we had more time, we would have likely also visited Thiepval to see the Franco-British Memorial which was the suggestion of our hotel. There are also memorials to the Australians, South Africans and Newfoundlanders that fought in the Somme.

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This s is one of largest private collections of stained-glass windows in France. It is located in an old house dating from the 16th century. The collection contains as well religious as civil windows from the 12th to the 20th centuries.
Every afternoon at 15.00 (except Sundays and bank holidays) there is the possibility to join a guided tour through the gallery. You will get informed about the theory and history before you can look at the creation of new windows. The tour is ONLY in French. On the internet site there says that there is an unaccompanied tour at 15.00 but that is wrong, you can come in only for this tour and it is accompanied.
The tour will last from 30 min to an hour, the admission for adults being 5 Euros, children 3 Euros.

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Every year since 1999 now, has there been an extrordinary show every night from June 1 till the third Sunday of September plus December 1 till January 1, showing the Cathedral's statues and smaller figures lit up by laser to show what it looked like in the Medieval times when it was all newly painted.
The show starts when "the night falls", which is in June set to be at 22.45, in July at 22.30, in August at 22.00, in September at 21.45 and in December at 19.00. The shows lasts for just less than an hour and is, of course, free of charge.

There is a website in French showing the figures in colour.
Here is the link: http://www.amiens-cathedrale.fr/colorisation.html

For more pictures, see my Travelogue.

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In the nave can we admire two bronze tombstones, each one carved in one block in the 13th century. There are Evrard de Fouilloy (the bishop who launched the building project of the Cathedral) and his successor Geoffroy d'Eu, buried.

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A Romanesque cathedral built in this area was destroyed by fire in 1218. That gave the opportunity to the then bishop, Evrard de Fouilloy, to launch his big scale building plans. But before they could get started some other buildings, like the Church of Saint Firmin the Confessor, had to be removed to give space for the cathedral. The building works then started in 1225. Just 46 years later, in 1269, the stained-glass windows were installed in the centre of the apse, indicating the completion date of the main building works.

The dimensions of the cathedral are impressing: it is 145 m long, the transept is 70 m wide, the nave is 40 m wide and the height of the vaults is 42,3 m.

The cathedral is open to visitors all year round, April through September from 08.30 till 18.30 and October through March from 08.30 till 17.30.
The entrance is free of charge.

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At the back of the choir, just opposite the stained-glass windows from 1269, there is a little but famous angel, sitting and weeping. He sits on the mausoleum of the canon Gulian Lucas. The legend has it that the dead canon's family had ordered the famous sculptor Nicolas Blasset to erect a marble mausoleum. So he did, but afterwards, when the family got the invoice, they were not at all satisfied. They thought it to be much too expensive, so they sued Blasset. To avoid paying the fines, he added this little angel as a "bonus" for free.

Anyway, I find him, this little angel, quite nice.

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It's absolutely HUGE, you should be able to fit FOUR St Paul's Cathedrals inside it, should you so choose. I must admit I have not expected something quite so large, it took ages to walk round it. It is also FREE to enter, if you are on a budget.

It was very interesting inside, lots of side shoots off into gated and barred niches containing an altar and chairs for worshipping. Sadly we were not fortunate enough to hear the organ playing that day, but it must have sounded magnificent when it was played.

I won't bore you with the extensive history, we'd be here all day if I recounted it from the 13th Century, but you can get most of it from the website below. I tried other websites, but they were all too flashy and hi-tech for me.