Bourges

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Bourges is a commune on the river Yèvre in central France, and its recorded story opens with a plea. In 52 BC, the sixth year of the Gallic Wars, the Gauls were burning their own towns so that Julius Caesar's army would find nothing to eat. The people of Avaricum, as Bourges was then known in Latin, argued before the Gallic council that their town should be left standing. The council listened.

  That decision raises questions. What made Avaricum worth saving when so many other towns went up in flames? What did Rome make of the place afterward? And how did a Celtic stronghold become a capital of provinces and duchies, a home to a great cathedral, and a town where weapons are still made?

  234

• 2. Avaricum Under Siege

  ›

  Three features of the landscape made the case for Avaricum: surrounding marshes, a river that very nearly encircled the town, and a strong wall on its southern side. Those defences earned the town only a temporary reprieve. Caesar's forces captured Avaricum and destroyed it, and only 800 of its inhabitants survived.

  The town had stood at the heart of something larger. In the fourth century BC, and still in Caesar's day, the area around it was the center of a Gallic confederacy. The Celts called the place Avaricon, and the Romans turned that into Avaricum.

  The modern name has two possible roots. One is the Bituriges, the people who first lived there. The other is the Germanic word Burg, meaning a hill or a village. The same word gave English its burgh, berg, and borough.

  The ruined town did not stay ruined. Rome rebuilt the site, this time as a Roman town.

  234

• 3. The Roman Town

  ›

  Forty hectares is the area enclosed by the massive walls of late-Roman Bourges. Builders put them up partly with stone taken from earlier public buildings, so the older city was literally recycled into its own defences.

  Roman Avaricum had a monumental gate, aqueducts, thermae, which were public bath complexes, and an amphitheatre. The town grew larger than Bourges would ever be during the Middle Ages.

  Traces of that era have outlasted the empire. The ruins of the Gallo-Roman walls are still counted among the sights of Bourges, standing as a reminder of how big the town once was.

  42

• 4. Frontier of Aquitaine

  ›

  Saint Ursinus, who lived in the third century AD, is regarded as the first bishop of the town. Bourges remains the seat of an archbishopric today.

  By the 8th century the town sat on the northern fringes of the Duchy of Aquitaine. That position made it the first town to feel Frankish attacks whenever the Franks crossed the Loire.

  In 731 the Frankish leader Charles Martel captured Bourges. Duke Odo the Great of Aquitaine took it back at once. Local counts continued to pledge their loyalty to the Aquitanian dukes until 762.

  That year the Frankish King Pepin the Short besieged the town, and the siege was a destructive one. Basque troops were found defending Bourges alongside its count.

  A later title would change the town's standing. Bourges became the capital of a viscounty, a role it kept until 1101.

  4

• 5. Capital of Berry

  ›

  In 1360 the Duchy of Berry was established, and Bourges became its capital. That made the town the seat of a duchy during the fourteenth century.

  During the Hundred Years' War, the future king Charles VII sought refuge in Bourges in the 1420s. His son, Louis XI, was born there in 1423.

  In 1438 Charles VII issued the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which ties the town's name to a royal decree. In this same period Bourges was a major centre of alchemy.

  A fire in 1487 destroyed a third of the town, and the economic decline of Bourges began after it. Not everything from earlier centuries was lost, though. A Gothic cathedral begun in the twelfth century still stands.

  4115

• 6. Stone and Timber

  ›

  The Cathedral of Saint Étienne was begun at the end of the twelfth century, and its main building ran from 1195 to 1255. It ranks among the earliest examples of the High Gothic style of the thirteenth century. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage list in 1992.

  The 15th-century Palais Jacques Cœur is another landmark. Nearby, a district of sixty-five hectares holds half-timbered houses and fine town houses.

  Lallemant's hotel dates from the early French Renaissance. Two other grand town houses now hold museums. The Berry museum occupies the Cujas' hotel, and the Estève museum is in the so-called aldermen's hotel. The new Hôtel de Ville was completed in 1992.

  Water shapes the town as well. Bourges sits where the Auron flows into the Yèvre, and the disused Canal de Berry runs alongside the Auron. In 2003 the marshes of the Yèvre and Voiselle rivers were listed as a French Natural Monument or Site.

  One institution is dedicated to a single plant. The Conservatoire national du Pélargonium is a national conservatory for the pelargonium.

  511121314

• 7. Natives and Adopted Sons

  ›

  Berthe Morisot, the Impressionist painter, was born in Bourges on the 14th of January 1841. The Art Nouveau sculptor Julien Caussé was born there in 1869. The manuscript illuminator Jean Colombe kept a workshop in the town, and the merchant Jacques Cœur was born there.

  The town's scholarly side runs from the Renaissance onward. Geoffroy Tory, who lived from 1480 to 1533, was born in Bourges and is described as the printer who introduced accents into French. John Calvin studied at the University of Bourges. The legal expert Jacques Cujas lived in the town in 1555-1557 and again in 1575-1590.

  The philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch, who lived from 1903 to 1985, was born in Bourges. So was the writer and historian Jules Bertaut, who lived from 1877 to 1959. The poet and translator Pierre Motin and the composer and singer François Bourgoing were also natives, from the 16th and 17th centuries respectively.

  The town's saints and outsiders have a place too. Eustadiola, who lived from 594 to 684, was a saint and abbess. The artist Marcel Bascoulard, who lived from 1913 to 1978, was born outside Bourges but spent most of his life there.

  Fiction has borrowed the town as well. In the 1936 film The Petrified Forest, the mother of the character Gabrielle Maple comes from Bourges. Bette Davis, who played the part, mispronounced the name as "Boorgs" in a way the source calls endearing.

  The singer Bénédicte Grimault, who lived from 1966 to 2020, performed as Belle du Berry and led the band Paris Combo. Her stage name carried the old province's name into the present.

  41314

• 8. Arms and Music

  ›

  Napoleon III made a decision in the 1860s that changed the town's economy. He moved the École de pyrotechnie militaire away from Metz, to put it far from the Prussian border. Bourges became an important center of artillery production.

  That legacy is visible in the 2025 figures, when one-sixth of the population worked in the defense industry, mainly manufacturing arms. KNDS France and MBDA are among the notable local employers.

  The Printemps de Bourges, a music festival, takes place in the town every year. Since 2002, a summer writing workshop called Les mille univers has run in collaboration with Oulipo.

  Sport adds to the town's profile. The women's basketball club CJM Bourges Basket has won multiple titles in domestic and European competition. The rugby team Bourges XV plays in the region at the Federal 3 level of the French National Division. The town's principal football team, Bourges Football 18, has been dissolved.

  Students can attend the University of Bourges, the École des Beaux Arts, or the École Nationale Supérieure d'Ingénieurs. The town is twinned with eight cities, including Augsburg in Germany, Aveiro in Portugal, and Peterborough in the United Kingdom.

  Visitors arrive by direct rail connections to Paris, Lyon, Orléans, Tours, and Nantes, or by the A71 motorway. The next milestone is 2028, when Bourges is due to be a European capital of culture.

  610181920