Normandy, Brittany & the Best of the North_ With Paris (Fodor's) - Fodor's [62]
Champagne, a place-name that has become a universal synonym for joy and festivity, actually began as a word of humble origin. Like campagna, its Italian counterpart, it’s derived from the Latin campus, which means “open field.” In French campus became champ, with the old language extending this to champaign, for “battlefield,” and champaine, for “district of plains.” Today this vast, endless plain—in the 19th century the famed writer Stendahl bemoaned “the atrocious flat wretchedness of Champagne”—has been the center of Champagne production for more than two centuries, stocking the cellars of its many conquerors (Napoléon, Czar Nicholas I, the Duke of Wellington) as well as those of contemporary case-toting bubblyphiles. Yet long before a drink put it on the map, this area of northern France was marked by great architecture and bloodstained history.
Picardy’s monotonous chalk plains are home, in fact, to many of France’s greatest medieval cathedrals, including those of Amiens, Reims, and Laon. These great structures testify to the wealth this region enjoyed thanks to its prime location between Paris and northern Europe. The “flying buttresses” and heaven-seeking spires of these cathedrals remind us that medieval stoneworkers sought to raise radically new Gothic arches to improbable heights, running for cover when the naves failed to stand. Happily, most have stood the test of time (though you might want to hover near the exits at Beauvais, the tallest cathedral in France—it still makes some engineers nervous).
But the region’s crossroads status also exacted a heavy toll, and it paid heavily for its role as a battleground for the bickering British, German, and French. From pre-Roman times to the armistice of 1945, some of Europe’s costliest wars were fought on northern French soil. World War I and World War II were especially unkind: epic cemeteries cover the plains of Picardy, and you can still see bullet-pocked buildings in Amiens. These days, happily, the vineyards of Champagne attract tourists interested in less sobering events.
TOP REASONS TO GO
Champagne—what else!: Drink it, see the vineyards, visit the cavernous chalk cellars where bottles are stored by the million.
Gothic Glory: No fewer than 10 Gothic cathedrals dot the region—check out the rivalry between the biggest of them (Amiens) and the tallest (neighboring Beauvais).
Tiny L’Épine: Set on the Route du Champagne, this cozy village has the superlative Aux Armes de Champagne restaurant, set across from its pretty stone-lacework church.
Laon, “Crowned Mountain”: With its cathedral towers patrolling the hilly horizon, Laon has a site whose grandeur rivals Mont-St-Michel (and just as exciting in close-up, with mighty stone oxen guarding the church towers).
The Capital of Bubbly: Drink now, pray later in Reims, the “Champagne City” and also home to France’s great coronation cathedral.
GETTING ORIENTED
Few drinks in the world have such a pull on the imagination as Champagne, yet surprisingly few tourists visit the pretty vineyards south of Reims. Perhaps it’s because the Champagne region is a bit of a backwater, halfway between Paris and Luxembourg. The 2007 arrival of the TGV line serving eastern France and Germany is helping to change all this. Northwest of Laon, the hills of Champagne give way to the plains of Picardy, where only giant cathedrals and giant pyramids of sugar beets in fall break up the skyline.
Champagne. The region’s obsession with Champagne is especially evident in Reims, the region’s hub, home to the great Champagne houses and site of one of the most historically important cathedrals in France. Once you tally up the 34 VIPs who have been crowned here and toured some Champagne cellars to bone up on the history of this noble beverage, you can head south.