Beauvais is a city approximately 79 kilometres (49 mi) by highway north of central Paris, in the northern French region of Picardie. It currently has a population of over 60,000 inhabitants. Beauvais lies at the foot of wooded hills on the left bank of the Thérain at its confluence with the Avelon. Its ancient ramparts have been destroyed, and it is now surrounded by boulevards, outside of which run branches of the Thérain. In addition, there are spacious promenades in the north-east of the town. The industry of Beauvais comprises, besides the state manufacture of tapestry, which dates from 1664, the manufacture of various kinds of cotton and woollen goods, brushes, toys, boots and shoes, and bricks and tiles. Market-gardening flourishes in the vicinity and an extensive trade is carried on in grain and wine.
In the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville and in the old streets near the cathedral there are several houses dating from the 12th to the 16th centuries. The Hôtel de ville, close to which stands the statue of Jeanne Hachette, was built in 1752. The episcopal palace, now used as a court-house, was built in the 16th century, partly upon the Gallo-Roman fortifications. The church of Saint-Étienne is a Romanesque-Gothic building (early 12th-late 16th centuries), including, in one of its transept’s portals, a sculpture of “Wheel of Life”.
The city’s cathedral, dedicated to Saint Peter (Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais), in some respects the most daring achievement of Gothic architecture, consists only of a transept and quire with apse and seven apse-chapels. The vaulting in the interior exceeds 46 m in height. The cathedral underwent a major repair and restoration process in 2008. The small Romanesque church of the 10th century known as the Basse Oeuvre occupies the site destined for the nave. Begun in 1247, under Bishop William of Grès (Guillaume de Grès, Guillaume de Grez), an extra 5 m were added to the height, to make it the tallest cathedral in Europe: the work was interrupted in 1284 by the collapse of the vaulting of the choir, a disaster that produced a temporary failure of nerve among the masons working in Gothic style. In 1573 the fall of a too-ambitious central tower stopped work again, after which little addition was made. The transept was built from 1500 to 1548.
Its façades, especially that on the south, exhibit all the richness of the late Gothic style. The carved wooden doors of both the north and the south portals are masterpieces respectively of Gothic and Renaissance workmanship. The church possesses an elaborate astronomical clock (1866) and tapestries of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries; but its chief artistic treasures are stained glass windows of the thirteenth, fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, the most beautiful of them from the hand of the Renaissance artist, Engrand Le Prince, a native of Beauvais. To him also is due some of the stained glass in St. Etienne, the second church of the town, and an interesting example of the transition stage between the Romanesque and Gothic styles.
