Laon

A medieval cathedral city perched on a hilltop above the Picard plain, Laon was a regional capital in Roman times, became the seat of a Bishopric in the sixth century and was a stronghold of the Carolingian Kings in the ninth. As a strategic walled town, Laon suffered badly in the Hundred Years' War, the warsd of religion, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 and the First World War, and was heavily bombarded by the Allies in 1944. The cathedral, however, survived the lot and still looks the way it was intended at its foundation in 1170.