The Aisne is the department of historic Picardy and a place steeped in the memory of the Great War, a region of agricultural plains and forests that was ravaged by four years of fighting between 1914 and 1918. The Chemin des Dames, a ridge overlooking the Aisne valley, was the scene in April 1917 of a disastrous French offensive that led to a mutiny by the French soldiers and remains one of the darkest chapters in French military history.
Laon, its capital perched on a limestone mesa overlooking the plain, boasts one of the finest Gothic cathedrals in France and a remarkably well-preserved medieval historic centre. Pierrefonds, whose castle was rebuilt by Viollet-le-Duc for Napoleon III in an ostentatious neo-medieval style, is one of the most visited castles in Picardy. Coucy-le-Château, whose keep was the tallest in Europe until its destruction by the Germans in 1917, Blérancourt and its Franco-American museum of the Great War…
The Saint-Gobain Forest, the Oise Valley and the Thiérache ponds offer unspoilt natural areas in this department characterised by the glass industry — Saint-Gobain — and porcelain.