Senlis

• 1. Introduction

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  Senlis is a commune in the northern French department of Oise, about 40 kilometers north of Paris, and it holds a claim few French towns can match: for nearly nine centuries, it was a city where kings were made. In 987, Archbishop Adalbero of Reims called together an assembly here and asked those gathered to choose Hugh Capet as king of France. That moment launched a royal dynasty whose grip on French history would last for hundreds of years. Yet Senlis is not simply a relic of medieval power. Its ancient cobbled alleys have drawn filmmakers from D.W. Griffith to Martin Provost. Its cathedral spire, 78 meters tall, rises over the plain of Valois and has done so since the 13th century. And beneath the streets, a Roman wall still stands that was first raised when the town was called Augustomagus. How did a small city beside a river called the Nonette become one of the defining places of French civilization? And why, after centuries of glory, did it slip quietly into decline?

• 2. Rome to Royalty

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  Augustomagus was the name Romans gave to the settlement that would eventually become Senlis. Later it was called Civitas Silvanectium, meaning "City of the Silvanectes," after the people who lived there. During the 3rd century, builders raised a seven-meter high defensive wall around the town in response to Frankish incursions. Roughly half of that wall still exists today, a physical remnant of an era when the region faced repeated pressure from outside forces.

  The town also featured a Roman amphitheatre seated for as many as 10,000 people. It was used for public meetings, theatre, gladiatorial combats, and animal hunts. The remains of the amphitheatre are still visible about 500 meters west of the walled town. That scale of public infrastructure suggests Augustomagus was no minor outpost. It was a place designed for large gatherings, for spectacle, for civic life.

  Senlis fell under the ownership of Hugh Capet in 981. He was elected king by his barons in 987 and later crowned at Noyon. Under Capetian rule, Senlis became a royal city and remained so until the reign of Charles X, who ruled from 1824 to 1830. The monarchs of the early French dynasties were drawn here by the proximity of the Chantilly Forest and its venison. They built a castle on the foundations of the Roman settlement, and the site bears traces of occupation going back to the 4th century, when Carolingian kings also passed through.

• 3. Peak and Decline

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  The 12th and 13th centuries marked the high point of Senlis. Trade in wool and leather increased, vineyards began to grow, and the population expanded enough that the city required a second set of ramparts. That new defensive ring, built under Phillip II, was larger and higher than the old Gallo-Roman walls. A municipal charter was granted to the town in 1173 by King Louis VII, formalizing its status as a governed community rather than simply a royal possession.

  The bishop of Senlis and a chancellor named Guérin became close advisors to the king during this period, tightening the city's ties to the French crown. In 1265, the Bailiwick of Senlis was created, covering a vast territory that included the Beauvais and the French Vexin. Political influence and economic activity fed each other during this stretch.

  By 1319, the city was crippled by debt and passed into the direct control of the monarchy. The Hundred Years' War devastated Senlis, though the city managed to escape outright destruction even while being besieged by the Armagnacs. Its economy suffered heavily, and recovery did not come until the 15th century. That revival brought new construction and restoration. In 1493, King Charles VIII of France, son of Louis XI, signed the Treaty of Senlis here with Maximilian I of Austria, Duke of Burgundy. The signing took place in a city that had outlasted its own golden age, but had not yet been forgotten.

• 4. The Cathedral and Its Spire

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  Senlis Cathedral is a Roman Catholic Gothic church and a French national monument. Construction began in 1153 and continued until 1519, a span of nearly four centuries that left visible marks across the building. The cathedral's spire dates from the 13th century and stands 78 meters tall, high enough to be seen across the plain of Valois.

  The southern portal, completed in the 16th century, was the work of architect Martin Chambiges and is considered a marker in the evolution of Gothic art. A fire destroyed the transepts, which were rebuilt between 1530 and 1556. The side portals and shallow east chapels date from roughly the same period, making the cathedral a layered record of how Gothic building practice shifted over the centuries.

  For many years the cathedral was the seat of the Bishopric of Senlis. That diocese was abolished by the Concordat of 1801, when its territory passed to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Beauvais. The city's ecclesiastical standing, like much else about it, was eventually absorbed by larger neighboring centers. But the building itself remained, and the rings found in a Gallo-Roman temple in the nearby forest of Halatte are now held in the city's Museum of Art and Archeology, connecting the pre-Christian past of the region to the institutions that came after.

• 5. War and Its Consequences

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  In early September 1914, German forces occupied Senlis during World War I. The town's mayor, Eugène Odent, was executed by the Germans along with six other civilian hostages: a tanner, a carter, a cafe waiter, a chauffeur, a baker's helper, and a stonecutter. The German rationale for executing Odent was that he had orchestrated civilian resistance by shuttering buildings for the convenience of snipers, failing to demand orderly submission from his neighbors, and generally inconveniencing German troops. The charges framed ordinary civilian behavior as sabotage.

  The Train Station and Courthouse were burned down, along with other buildings. French forces liberated the town later that same year. In 1931, the main street of Senlis was named after Odent, a civic acknowledgment of what he had faced.

  Édouard Coeurdevey, writing in his journal A Writer at War 14-18, described the German destruction he witnessed when he visited Senlis on the 6th of June 1915. Two days later, on the 8th of June, he recorded a single French-language phrase: "Senlis bonde d'Annamites." That notation placed Senlis in the wider geography of French colonial mobilization, where soldiers drawn from across the empire passed through the devastated town as the war ground on. The former St. Vincent Abbey, founded in 1065 by Queen Anne of Kiev, had by the 19th century been transformed into a boys' boarding school by the Marist Fathers, evidence that even the oldest institutions in Senlis kept adapting to new circumstances.

• 6. A City on Film

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  The historic look of Senlis, with its ancient cobbled alleys and its position just north of Paris, made it an unusually practical location for cinema. D.W. Griffith shot Coeurs du monde there in 1918, with Lillian Gish in the cast. That filming happened just as the war was ending, in a town that had been occupied and partly burned only a few years earlier.

  In the decades that followed, Senlis appeared in films by Philippe de Broca, including Cartouche in 1961, which starred Jean-Paul Belmondo and Claudia Cardinale, and Le Roi de Coeur in 1966. Catherine Deneuve, Jean Marais, and Jacques Perrin appeared there in Peau d'âne in 1970. Louis de Funès returned to Senlis twice: for L'aile ou la cuisse in 1976, alongside Coluche, and for L'Avare in 1980 with Michel Galabru.

  La Nuit de Varennes, directed by Ettore Scola in 1982, brought together Jean-Louis Barrault, Marcello Mastroianni, and Hanna Schygulla on the streets of Senlis. La Reine Margot came in 1994 with Isabelle Adjani and Daniel Auteuil, followed by Arsène Lupin in 2004, directed by Jean-Paul Salomé with Kristin Scott-Thomas. Séraphine, Martin Provost's 2008 film with Yolande Moreau, and L'autre Dumas in 2010, starring Gérard Depardieu and Benoît Poelvoorde, kept the list running well into the 21st century. The city's Hôtel de Ville carries a plaque honoring Henry IV of France, one more layer of association layered onto streets that have served as a backdrop for everything from medieval dramas to modern comedies.