Tour Perret, Amiens

There's a belt of 'department capital cities' surrounding Paris conveniently placed at little more than 1 hour by train (Rouen, Amiens, Reims, Orleans, Troyes) from the magical city, that seem perfect for a day trip. Years ago I did it with Rouen, and lately I had thought many times of going on with exploring some of these cities, but in the end the idea of wandering around Paris always ended up winning over this kind of day trip. Last week I was lucky to spend a few days in Paris again, and finally decided to go for something new and do a day-trip to Amiens the capital of the historical territory of Picardy.

Amiens is mainly known as Jules Verne city. Hey, but Nantes also claims that title, right? Well, indeed he spent his life in Nantes, Paris and Amiens... a smart guy I have to say. Amiens is a lovely city, at least its city center (I did not go any further). Having been in Lille some years ago I already knew that the beautiful architecture of Northern France is very similar to what you find in Belgium, but what quite surprised me is that Amiens has quite of a Brugges feeling. The small canals and the beautiful single-family houses in the St Leu neighbourhood (and the rain, cold and humidity...) brought me many memories of my autumn trip to Brugges years ago. All the city center is really beautiful and is well worth a visit, and the massive gothic cathedral is just gorgeous, but there's an architectural element that I found particularly striking, and that grants the city the right to be in modern Architecture books, the Tour Perret.

The Tour Perret was built in the early 50's and with its little more than 100 meters height it was for some time the tallest building in Western Europe (quite funny to find that in a small city in a country where for good part of the population the irrational hatred for buildings higher than 8 stories makes up one essential part of their identity...), but this kind of past ranking is not particularly interesting to me, what seduced me (mesmerized me almost) is its architecture. The tour is amazingly thin, a square base with 4 windows on each side (becoming 3 in the upper levels). Made of grey reinforced concrete, when seen from the distance one could almost think of it as the belfray of some gothic church, so it's really amazing how nicely it fits in the city scape. A perfect reference point that makes an amazing contribution to the beauty and charm of this small city.

This building is just opposite the main train station, gare du Nord, that was built at the same time also by Auguste Perret in a similar style. It looks pretty massive and interesting (even more with the carefully placed Christmas lights)