Explorar Amiens

The Musée de Picardie is the main museum of Amiens, housed in a Second Empire building of 1855–1867 by Henri Parent and Arthur-Stanislas Diet, one of the first in France built as a museum. Its collections run from prehistory and Egyptian antiquities to European painting, and murals by Puvis de Chavannes line the grand staircase and gallery.

Amiens Cathedral was built almost entirely between 1220 and about 1270, which gives it an unusually uniform High Gothic design. At about 200,000 cubic metres it has the largest interior volume of any cathedral in France, and its west front and south transept portal keep extensive 13th-century sculpture. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981.

The Hortillonnages are about 300 hectares of former marshland on the eastern edge of Amiens, divided into small garden islands by some 65 kilometres of channels. Market gardeners have worked them since the Middle Ages. Visitors tour them in electric boats run by a conservation association or walk the towpath along the Somme.