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Dreux
Dreux village St Pierre
Saint-Pierre church
Blason ville fr Dreux (Eure-et-Loir)
Coat of arms



Dreux is located in France
Red pog
Dreux
Coordinates: 48°44′14″N 1°21′59″E / 48.7372, 01.3664Coordinates: 48°44′14″N 1°21′59″E / 48.7372, 01.3664
Country France
Region Centre
Department Eure-et-Loir
Arrondissement Dreux
Intercommunality Drouais
Government
 • Mayor (2008–2014) Gérard Hamel
Area1 24.27 km2 (9.37 sq mi)
Population (2008)2 31,212
 • Density 1,300/km2 (3,300/sq mi)
INSEE/Postal code 28134 / 28100
Elevation 75–139 m (246–456 ft)
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. 2 Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

Dreux (French pronunciation: [dʁø]) is a commune in the Eure-et-Loir department in northern France.

History[]

Dreux was known in ancient times as Durocassium, the capital of the Durocasses Celtic tribe. Despite the legend, its name was not related with Druids. The Romans established here a fortified camp known as Castrum Drocas.

In the Middle Ages, Dreux was the centre of the County of Dreux. The first count of Dreux was Robert, the son of King Louis the Fat. The first large battle of the French Wars of Religion occurred at Dreux, on 19 December 1562, resulting in a hard-fought victory for the Catholic forces of the duc de Montmorency.

Population[]

Historical population
Year Pop. ±%
1793 5,383
1800 5,437 +1.0%
1806 6,037 +11.0%
1821 6,032 −0.1%
1831 6,249 +3.6%
1836 6,379 +2.1%
1841 6,367 −0.2%
1846 6,774 +6.4%
1851 6,764 −0.1%
1856 6,498 −3.9%
1861 6,940 +6.8%
1866 7,237 +4.3%
1872 7,418 +2.5%
1876 7,922 +6.8%
1881 8,254 +4.2%
1886 8,719 +5.6%
1891 9,364 +7.4%
1896 9,718 +3.8%
1901 9,647 −0.7%
1906 9,928 +2.9%
1911 10,692 +7.7%
1921 10,908 +2.0%
1926 11,313 +3.7%
1931 12,200 +7.8%
1936 13,361 +9.5%
1946 14,184 +6.2%
1954 16,818 +18.6%
1962 21,588 +28.4%
1968 29,408 +36.2%
1975 33,101 +12.6%
1982 33,379 +0.8%
1990 35,230 +5.5%
1999 31,849 −9.6%
2008 31,212 −2.0%

Sights[]

Chapelle royale de Dreux[]

In 1775, the lands of the comté de Dreux had been given to the Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre by his cousin Louis XVI. In 1783, the duke sold his domain of Rambouillet to Louis XVI. On 25 November of that year, in a long religious procession, Penthièvre transferred the nine caskets containing the remains of his parents, the Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse and Marie Victoire de Noailles, comtesse de Toulouse, his wife, Marie Thérèse Félicité d'Este, Princess of Modène, and six of their seven children, from the small medieval village church next to the castle in Rambouillet, to the chapel of the Collégiale Saint-Étienne de Dreux.[1] The duc de Penthièvre died in March 1793 and his body was laid to rest in the crypt beside his parents. On 21 November of that same year, in the midst of the French Revolution, a mob desecrated the crypt and threw the ten bodies in a mass grave in the Chanoines cemetery of the Collégiale Saint-Étienne. In 1816, the duc de Penthièvre's daughter, Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, duchesse d'Orléans, had a new chapel built on the site of the mass grave of the Chanoines cemetery, as the final resting place for her family. In 1830, Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, son of the duchesse d'Orléans, embellished the chapel which was renamed Chapelle royale de Dreux, now the necropolis of the Orléans royal family.

Other sights[]

  • Renaissance Château d'Anet
  • Hôtel de Montulé (16th century)
  • Pavilion of Louis XVI
  • Hôtel de Salvat-Duhalde (18th century)

Personalities[]

Dreux was the birthplace of:

  • Kalifa Cissé, footballer
  • Salif Cisse, footballer
  • Siraba Dembélé, handball player
  • Abdou Dieye, footballer
  • Louis Victor Dubois (1837–1914), wine merchant and politician
  • Françoise Gaspard, politician and historian
  • Marouan Kechrid, basketball player
  • Yannick Lesourd, athlete
  • Jean Rotrou (1609–1650), poet and tragedian
  • Jean-Louis-Auguste Loiseleur-Deslongchamps (1774–1849), botanist
  • Charles Delescluze (1809–1871), journalist and military commander of the Paris Commune
  • Eddie London (1956–), singer
  • François-André Danican Philidor (1726–1795), musician and chess player

International relations[]

Dreux is twinned with:

  • Italy Todi, Italy, since 1960
  • Germany Melsungen, Germany, since 1966
  • Burkina Faso Koudougou, Burkina Faso, since 1972
  • England Evesham, England, United Kingdom, since 1977
  • Germany Bautzen, Germany, since 1992
  • Morocco Mohammedia, Morocco, since 2010

See also[]

  • Communes of the Eure-et-Loir department

References[]

  1. ^ G. Lenotre, Le Château de Rambouillet, six siècles d'histoire, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1930, reprint: Denoël, Paris, 1984, (215 pages), chapter 5: Le prince des pauvres, pp. 78–79

External links[]

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This page uses content from the English language Wikipedia. The original content was at Dreux. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with this Familypedia wiki, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons License.
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