The origins of settlement in the Aisne: from Cuiry to Chaudardes

It all began in the early 1970s, when the Comité du Tourisme and the Conseil Général de l'Aisne took an interest in archaeology. The latter was one of the first in France to recruit a professional archaeologist, Michel Boureux.At the same time, the University of Paris I welcomed a Czech archaeologist, Bohumil Soudsky, who was soon looking for a place to train his students in excavation techniques in situ, close to the capital. This commune was chosen because of the nature of its site, which was home to the Aisne's oldest farmers five millennia before our era. The first Neolithic house was built in the summer of 1977, and a series of archaeological digs were carried out at various sites around the village. The smaller reconstruction and the panels you can also see are recent descendants of this period...  

Dedicated to Saint-Gervais-et-Saint-Protais, this church was built in the 12th century - when the village was part of the Origny-Sainte-Benoîte abbey near Saint-Quention - and was largely rebuilt after the First World War due to the destruction it had suffered.

A beautiful Romanesque church of impressive dimensions for such a small village; it must be said that, before the war, a pilgrimage dedicated to Notre-Dame was held here. Even though it was spared at the start of the First World War, the destruction in the village was so extensive at the end of the war that local author Maxime de Sars described the damage to ‘the beautiful church that the centuries had respected’. A statue of the Virgin Mary from the original church can be seen in the small square around it...