Rouen was founded by the
Gaulish tribe of the
Veliocasses, who controlled a large area in the lower Seine valley. They called it
Ratumacos; the
Romans called it
Rotomagus. It was considered the second city of
Gallia Lugdunensis after
Lugdunum (
Lyon) itself. Under the reorganization of
Diocletian, Rouen was the chief city of the divided province Gallia Lugdunensis II and reached the apogee of its Roman development, with an amphitheatre and
thermae of which foundations remain. In the 5th century, it became the seat of a bishopric and later a capital of
Merovingian Neustria. From their first incursion into the lower valley of the Seine in 841, the
Normans overran Rouen. From 912, Rouen was the capital of the
Duchy of Normandy and residence of the
local dukes, until
William the Conqueror moved his residence to
Caen. In 1150, Rouen received its founding charter which permitted
self-government. During the 12th century, Rouen was the site of a
yeshiva known as
La Maison Sublime. Discovered in 1976, it is now a museum. At that time, about 6,000 Jews lived in the town, comprising about 20% of the population. On 24 June 1204, King
Philip II Augustus of France entered Rouen and definitively annexed Normandy to the
French Kingdom. He demolished the Norman castle and replaced it with his own, the , built on the site of the
Gallo-Roman amphitheatre. A textile industry developed based on wool imported from England, for which the cities of Flanders and Brabant were constantly competitors, and finding its market in the
Champagne fairs. Rouen also depended for its prosperity on the river traffic of the Seine, on which it enjoyed a monopoly that reached as far upstream as
Paris. In the 13th and 14th centuries urban strife threatened the city: in 1291, the mayor was assassinated and noble residences in the city were pillaged.
Philip IV reimposed order and suppressed the city's charter and the lucrative monopoly on river traffic, but he was quite willing to allow the Rouennais to repurchase their old liberties in 1294. In 1306, he decided to expel the Jewish community of Rouen, then numbering some five or six thousand. In 1389, another urban revolt of the underclass occurred, the
Harelle. It was suppressed with the withdrawal of Rouen's charter and river-traffic privileges once more. During the
Hundred Years' War, on 19 January 1419, Rouen surrendered after a
long siege to
Henry V of England, who annexed
Normandy once again to the
Plantagenet domains. French soldier
Alain Blanchard summarily hung English prisoners of war from the city walls during the siege, for which he was beheaded after Rouen fell, while
canon and
vicar general of Rouen
Robert de Livet excommunicated Henry V, resulting in De Livet being imprisoned for five years in England.
Joan of Arc, who supported a return to French rule, was
burned at the stake on 30 May 1431 in Rouen, where most inhabitants supported the duke of Burgundy, the French king's enemy. The king of France,
Charles VII, recaptured the town in 1449. Rouen was staunchly Catholic during the
French Wars of Religion, and underwent an unsuccessful
five-month siege in 1591/2 by the Protestant
Henry IV of France and an English force under
Earl of Essex. A brief account by an English participant has survived. During the
repression of January and February 1894, the police conducted raids targeting the
anarchists living there, without much success. The first competitive motor race ran from Paris to Rouen in 1894. During the
German occupation in World War II, the
Kriegsmarine had its headquarters located in a chateau on what is now the
Rouen Business School. The city was heavily damaged during the same war on
D-Day, and its famed cathedral was almost destroyed by Allied bombs. ==Main sights==