The Somme is the department of remembrance for the Great War, a region of chalky plains and the bocage countryside of the Thiérache, home to one of the largest military cemeteries in the world: the British cemetery at Thiepval, with its monumental memorial arch designed by Lutyens in memory of the 72,000 British soldiers of the Somme with no known grave, is the symbol of this painful memory.
Amiens, capital of the Somme and Picardy, boasts the largest Gothic cathedral in France in terms of interior volume, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its Hortillonnages, floating market gardens on a network of canals on the outskirts of the city, form one of the most unusual landscapes in Picardy. Chantilly, on the border with the Oise, Pierrefonds, and Compiègne with its royal forests and Imperial-era castle bear witness to the region’s appeal to French kings and emperors.
Long, Tilloloy, Raray, whose château and arcades carved with hunting scenes served as the setting for Jean Cocteau’s film Beauty and the Beast, and Villers-Bretonneux, a memorial to Australian remembrance in the Great War, make up the heritage of a department that combines Gothic grandeur with painful memories.