Taxi Charleville-Mézières → Reims

Charleville-Mézières, prefecture of the Ardennes, is a city of unique character born from the merger of two twin towns. Charleville, founded in 1606 by Charles de Gonzague, is world-famous for its Place Ducale, a classical architectural masterpiece inspired by the Place des Vosges in Paris. It was here that Arthur Rimbaud was born in 1854, the prodigious poet who revolutionised French literature at seventeen with 'Le Bateau ivre' and 'Une Saison en enfer'. The Rimbaud Museum, housed in the Old Mill on the banks of the Meuse, traces the turbulent life of French poetry's enfant terrible. Mézières, a fortified medieval town on the right bank of the Meuse, houses the Basilica of Notre-Dame d'Espérance with its remarkable contemporary stained glass. The city is also the world capital of puppetry, hosting the World Puppet Theatre Festival every two years. The Ardennes, France's most forested department, offers landscapes of deep forests, Meuse meanders and epic legends. Reims, this route's destination, is the city where thirty-three kings of France were crowned in its UNESCO-listed Notre-Dame Cathedral.