Angoulême (; Poitevin-Saintongeais: Engoulaeme; ) is a small city in the southwestern French department of Charente, of which it is the prefecture.
Located on a plateau overlooking a meander of the river Charente, the city is nicknamed the "balcony of the southwest". The city proper's population is a little less than 42,000 but it is the centre of an urban area of 110,000 people extending more than from east to west.
Formerly the capital of Angoumois during the Ancien Régime, Angoulême was a fortified town for a long time, and was highly coveted due to its position at the centre of many roads important to communication, so therefore it suffered many sieges. From its tumultuous past, the city, perched on a rocky spur, inherited a large historical, religious, and urban heritage which attracts a lot of tourists.
Nowadays, Angoulême is at the centre of an agglomeration, which is one of the most industrialised regions between Loire and Garonne (the paper industry was established in the 16th century, a foundry and electromechanical engineering developed more recently). It is also a commercial and administrative city with its own university of technology, and a vibrant cultural life. This life is dominated by the Angoulême International Comics Festival, the FFA Angoulême Francophone Film Festival and the Musiques Métisses Festival that contribute substantially to the international renown of the city. Moreover, Angoulême hosts 40 animation and video game studios that produce half of France's animated production. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch was filmed in this city.
Angoulême is called "Ville de l'Image" which means literally "City of the Image". The commune has been awarded four flowers by the National Council of Towns and Villages in Bloom in the Competition of cities and villages in Bloom.Angoulême in the Competition for Towns and Villages in Bloom
Geography Angoulême is an Acropolis city located on a hill overlooking a loop of the Charente limited in area upstream by the confluence of the Touvre and downstream by the Anguienne and Eaux Claires.
Location and access Angoulême is located at the intersection of a major north–south axis: the N10 Paris-Bayonne; and the east–west axis: the N14 route Central-Europe Atlantique Limoges-Saintes. Angoulême is also connected to Périgueux and Saint-Jean-d'Angely by the D939 and to Libourne by the D674.
By train: the Paris-Bordeaux line, served mainly by TGV, passes through Angoulême and the TER Limoges-Saintes provides connections. By water: although the river Charente is currently only used for tourism, it was a communication channel, especially for freight, until the 19th century and the port of l'Houmeau was very busy.
The Angoulême-Cognac International Airport is at Brie-Champniers.
Districts
Old Angoulême is the old part between the ramparts and the town centre with winding streets and small squares. The city centre is also located on the plateau and was portrayed by Honoré de Balzac in "The Lost Illusions" as "the height of grandeur and power". There is a Castle, a town hall, a prefecture, and a cathedral with grand houses everywhere. Unlike Old Angoulême, however, the entire city centre was greatly rebuilt in the 19th century.
Surrounding the city were five old faubourgs: l'Houmeau, Saint-Cybard, Saint-Martin, Saint-Ausone, and la Bussatte. The district of l'Houmeau was described by Balzac as "based on trade and money" because this district lived on trade, boatmen, and their scows. The port of l'Houmeau was created in 1280 on the river bank. It marked the beginning of the navigable part from Angoulême to the sea. Saint-Cybard, on the bank of the Charente, was created around the Abbey of Saint-Cybard then became an industrial area with papermills, especially Le Nil. Saint-Martin - Saint-Ausone is a district composed of two former parishes outside the ramparts. At La Bussatte the Champ de Mars esplanade is now converted into a shopping mall, and adjoins Saint-Gelais.
Today the city has fifteen districts: Centre-ville Old Angoulême Saint-Ausone - Saint-Martin Saint-Gelais La Bussatte - Champ de Mars L'Houmeau Saint-Cybard Victor-Hugo, Saint-Roch is notable for its military presence. Basseau is a district which was created in the 19th century with the port of Basseau, the explosives factory in 1821, the Laroche-Joubert papermill in 1842, then the bridge in 1850. Sillac - La Grande-Garenne was a private housing estate then was built up with HLM units. Bel-Air, la Grand Font in the railway station district with housing blocks from the 1950s at Grand Font. La Madeleine which was completely rebuilt after the bombings of 1944. Ma Campagne is a district which was detached from Puymoyen commune in 1945Pierre Dubourg-Noves (dir.), History of Angoulême and its surroundings, Toulouse, Éditions Privat, coll. "Univers de la France et des pays francophones", 1990, 319 p. (, notice BnF no FRBNF350724243), p. 295-296 and built-up as a collective habitat from 1972. Le Petit Fresquet was also detached from Puymoyen and is semi-rural. Frégeneuil was also detached from Puymoyen and is semi-rural.
Panorama of the city
Neighbouring communes and villages
Google Maps
Hydrography The Port-l'Houmeau, the old port on the Charente located in the district of l'Houmeau is in a flood zone and during floods the Besson Bey Boulevard is usually cut.
Geology
Geologically the town belongs to the Aquitaine Basin as does three-quarters of the western department of Charente.
The commune is located on the same limestone from the Upper Cretaceous period which occupies the southern half of the department of Charente, not far from Jurassic formations beginning at Gond-Pontouvre.
The earliest Cretaceous period - the Cenomanian - is in the relatively low areas (l'Houmeau, the heights of Saint-Cybard, Sillac), at an average altitude of 50m.
The city was established on the Plateau (altitude 100 m) that dominates the loop of the River Charente, a Turonian (also called Angoumien) formation which forms a dissected plateau of parallel valleys and a cuesta facing north that extends towards La Couronne to the west and Garat to the east.
This limestone plateau contains natural cavities which have been refurbished by man in the form of three or four floors of caves, some of which include antique grain silos.
The valley of the Charente is made up of old and new alluvium which provides rich soil for farming and some sandpits. These alluvial deposits were deposited successively during the Quaternary period on the inside of two meanders of the river that are Basseau and Saint-Cybard. The oldest alluviums are on the plain of Basseau and reach a relative height of 25 m.BRGM geological map on Géoportail INfoterre Visualiser , BRGM website Paper Notice for Angoulême, BRGM, 1973, Infoterre website, consulted on 17 November 2011
Relief The old part of the city is built on the plateau—a rocky outcrop created by the valleys of the Anguienne and Charente at an altitude of —while on the river bank the area subject to flooding is high. Angoulême is characterized by the presence of ramparts on a cliff high.
The plateau of Ma Campagne, south of the old town, has almost the same features and peaks at 109 m in the woods of Saint-Martin. The plateau is elongated and separates the valleys of Eaux Claires, which is the southern boundary of the commune, from that of Anguienne, which is parallel.
Both plateaux overlook the Charente valley and the outlying areas such as l'Houmeau, Basseau, and Sillac at their western ends. The plateau of Angoulême is the northwest extension of the Soyaux plateau. L'Houmeau, the station area, and that of Grand-Font are to the north of the plateau along the small Vimière valley, also a tributary of the Charente, but further north (towards Gond-Pontouvre and L'Isle-d'Espagnac) than Anguienne is to the south.
The highest point of the city of Angoulême is at an altitude of 133 m near Peusec located to the south-east near the border with Puymoyen. The lowest point is 27 m, located along the Charente at Basseau.IGN Map on Géoportail
The ramparts Since Roman times ramparts have surrounded the Plateau of Angoulême. Repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt, their reconstruction was finally stopped in the 19th century. The Ramparts are classified as historical monumentsMinistry of Culture, Mérimée and the Ramparts Tour is one of the main attractions of the city.
The Ramparts of Angoulême
Climate Angoulême is under an oceanic influence and similar to that of the city of Cognac where the departmental weather station is located. Precipitations are modest all year long, with a slight drying tendency during summer.
Toponymy Since Antiquity and through the Middle Ages, the name of the town has been attested in many forms in Latin and Old French:
IculismaLetter of Ausone, Louis Maurin in: Jean Combes (dir.) and Michel Luc (dir.), Charente from prehistory to modern times (collective work), St-Jean-d'Y, Imprimerie Bordessoules, coll. "History by documentrs", 1986, 429 p. (, notice BnF no FRBNF34901024q), p. 56,69,70 and EculisnaErnest Nègre, Toponymy General of France, Librairie Droz, Genève, volume 1: Pre-Celtic, Celtic, and Roman formations, 1990, 704 pages, p. 53, Read online, consulted on 31 December 2012 from the 4th century civitas Engolismensium around 400ADNotitia provinciarum et civitatum Galliae, Aquitaine seconde, 4th century Ecolisima (Merovingian currency)Etymological Dictionary of place names in France, Librairie Guénégaud, Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing, 1979, Paris, , p. 19a Ecolisina and Aquilisima in 511 Ecolisna in the 6th century EgolismaHistory of the Franks, Grégoire de Tours Egolisina in the 10th century Equalisma, Engolma, Egolesma, and EngolismaJean Nanglard, Cartulary of the Church of Angoulême, Vol. IX, Bulletins and memoirs of the Archaeological and Historical Society of Charente, imprimerie G.Chasseignac, 1899 (1st edition 1880), 296 p. (Read online), p. 229Pierre Dubourg-Noves (dir.), History of Angoulême and its surroundings, Toulouse, Éditions Privat, coll. "Univers de la France et des pays francophones", 1990, 319 p. (, notice BnF no FRBNF350724243), p. 20 Engolesme at the end of the 12th century.
The absence of any convincing explanation of the origin of the name of the city has led to several attempts to fit etymological explanations unrelated to the well documented old forms and phonetically unlikely: It came from incolumissima meaning "very safe and healthy," but there is no trace of an [n] in the most ancient forms and no trace of a [mi] either. It was an alteration of in collisnā meaning "on the hill" but a toponym is never formed from the Latin preposition in. As for the French word colline (hill), it was borrowed from the Italian collina at the time of the Renaissance (attested for the first time in 1555).cnrtl website: Etymology of "colline" In addition the suffix -isnā was not used to produce derivations from Latin words and it is doubtful that it even exists. Finally, independent alterations of regular phonetic changes occur as a result of analogy or more precisely of popular etymology: that is to say analogy with other similar and frequent used names in the region or an attempt to connect the toponym to a term that makes sense. It is clear that the old forms of Angoulême are mostly obscure.
Some hypotheses have been advanced with a stronger basis: