page_title: Cambrai
section_title: The 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: Cambrai / Urbanism / Urban morphology / The 20th century
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Carte postale ancienne éditée par Méresse, n°2038&#160;: CAMBRAI pendant l'incendie - La Choque et Place au Bois
context_page_description: Cambrai, formerly Cambray and historically in English Camerick or Camericke, is a commune in the Nord department and in the Hauts-de-France region of France on the Scheldt river, which is known locally as the Escaut river.
  A sub-prefecture of the department, Cambrai is a town which had 32,518 inhabitants in the Census of 2009. It is in the heart of the urban unit of Cambrai which, with 47,138 inhabitants, ranks as 7th largest of the department. Its urban area, a more extensive range, included 65,986 inhabitants in 2009. With Lille and the towns of the former Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin, it is also part of the Metropolitan area of Lille which has more than 3.8 million inhabitants.
  Towards the end of the Roman Empire, Cambrai replaced Bavay as the "capital" of the land of the Nervii. At the beginning of the Merovingian era, Cambrai became the seat of an immense archdiocese covering all the right bank of the Scheldt and the centre of a small ecclesiastical principality, roughly coinciding with the shire of Brabant, including the central part of the Low Countries. The bishopric had some limited secular power and depended on the Holy Roman Empire until annexation to France in 1678.
context_section_description: The destruction caused by World War I necessitated a reconstruction of the centre. The municipality organised a competition, which was won by Pierre Leprince-Ringuet. His project, inspired with both a regionalist taste and the Hausmannian style, completely redesigned the layout of roads from the Middle Ages. It was rebuilt as a modern city. The architect Louis Marie Cordonnier described the prospects to elected representatives:
  The centre of the city is completely razed and destroyed. So, you have free rein. Your duty is to remake a city pleasant, modern, retaining its character. Acting otherwise would be a crime for which you would be responsible to future generations. Your streets were narrow, twisty: Straighten them, adjust them, expand them. Your houses were awkward, obscure, unhealthy: Enforce in your specifications the requirements for hygiene, for ventilation, for lighting.
  — Louis Marie Cordonnier, La Vie des Cambrésiens [The Life of the People of Cambrai]
  The Leprince-Ringuet plan was only partially achieved, but the streets were removed, others expanded, and new paths were created as the Avenue de la Victoire [Avenue of Victory].
  Further destruction due to the Allied bombing of April–August 1944 again required a reconstruction. It was especially, in the years following World War II, to rehouse the victims and to cope with the expanding population. Priority was given to detached houses, and new quarters appeared, such as the "Martin–Martine" subdivision south-east of the city. In the 1980s the municipality worked to restore and develop the ancient heritage.
caption: Ruins of the town centre, in 1917
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "CanoScan LiDE 500F", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACDSee Pro 5", "Image DateTime": "2012:05:19 07:38:47", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "208", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "396", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9694", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2012:05:19 02:28:40", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF SubSecTime": "811", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1638", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1049", "EXIF FileSource": "Reflection Print Scanner", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto"}