Cæsar from the Carnutes in 52 B.C. By the third century the town was known as _Aurelianus_, from which it is an easy step to the present name. In 451 the devastating Huns under Attila were forced back. By 613 Orleans had become one of the most important cities in France, second only to Paris; it was frequently the residence of French kings, and money was minted there. In 1344 Philippe de Valois separated Orleans from the crown, and it became a duchy, and in the next century (1429) came that historic siege by the English, raised by the ‘Maid,’ who, clad in white armour, rode fearlessly at the head of the French army, and sent a cold terror into the hearts of the English. After having been occupied by Leaguers and Huguenots in turn, Henri IV. took the city in 1594. The year of Waterloo saw the Prussians in Orleans, and in 1870 they again occupied the city. They were driven out for a time, but after returning they did not evacuate until March, 1871. _The Cathedral_ has its eighteenth-century ‘Gothic’ west front facing the wide Rue Jeanne d’Arc. It is a most abominable conception of narrow pointed doorways of a Moorish character, with ogee arches and the oddest pair of towers. The thirteenth-century east end, with its great display of flying buttresses, is the chief portion of the earlier cathedral burnt by the Calvinists in 1567. _Building Dates_ 362. Founded by St. Euverte and St. Aignan. 999. Burnt. 1206. Second church (Romanesque) destroyed. 1287. Gothic reconstruction commenced by Bishop Gilles de Patay. 1567. Burnt by Calvinists before Gothic church was quite finished. Saved from the fire: eleven chapels of the apse, side walls of choir, and two Romanesque towers. 1601. Henri IV. placed the first stone of the present building, in fulfilment of an obligation imposed upon him by Pope Clement VIII. before absolution. 18th cent. The bastard Gothic western façade erected in the reign of Louis XV. by Gabriel. Romanesque towers demolished and rebuilt. 1829. Reconstruction finished. The interior is very impressive, with tall pillars without capitals, the great star windows in the transepts, and the very pictorial modern glass. _Other Churches:_ _St. Pierre-le-Puellier_ is the oldest church in Orleans. It is of unprepossessing appearance, but is interesting on account of the remains of the ninth and twelfth centuries. _St. Aignan_ was mutilated by Protestants in 1562. It is built over a crypt of the eleventh century, and consists now of transepts and choir only. _St. Euverte_ is a Flamboyant church, first built in the twelfth but rebuilt in the fifteenth century. It has a tower of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. _Notre Dame de Recouvrance_ is an eleventh-century church, rebuilt in 1515-1519, and restored in 1862.