Péronne is situated in the old region of Santerre, home of the early French kings.

Hidden in the Somme valley, between lakes and huge fields of crops, the town is known as a paradise for fishing and hunting.

It is close to where the 1916, first 1918 and second 1918 Battles of the Somme took place during the First World War.

The Museum of the Great War (known in French as the Historial de la Grande Guerre) is located in the château.

Places and monuments

• Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Péronne: Destroyed between 1914 and 1918, then slightly damaged in 1944, the west front, is built in "gothique flamboyant" style.
• In front of the church stands the statue of Marie Fouré, a local heroine.
• The Alfred Danicourt Museum, founded in the Hôtel-de-ville in 1877, is the only museum of the Somme to have been pillaged and destroyed by the Germans between 1916 and 1918. It lost 98% of its collection. A few archeological treasures were saved by the museum curator, who hid them from the Germans when they took the town in 1914. These treasures were again subject to German interest in 1941. Overlooked by the first reconstruction in 1955, it was not until the second reconstruction of the building that the museum was back in use. Its founder, the former mayor Charles Alfred Danicourt, created the museum as a cultural beacon of the Somme around 1900. Nowadays one can find one of the finest collections of early Gallic coins, antique gold jewelry, Merovingian funeral artefacts, a panorama of sand production during prehistoric times and some local examples of 19th- and 20th-century paintings.
• The city of Péronne is equally known for its "Monument to the Dead", the work of the architect Louis Faille, representing a Picardy woman with clenched fist raised above the body of her son or husband killed by the war.
• Monument of the Sailor Delpas, recalling the defence of the city and its fall at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in the winter 1870-1871.
• The Australian Monument recalls the heroic actions in a neighbourhood of the town by Australian soldiers in 1918.
• The Brittany Gate, with its strengthened stonework, is reminiscent of the defensive aspect of Péronne
• The Château de Péronne is a largely ruined castle, classified as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.
• Within the walls of the ancient château, nowadays run by the Somme departement, the "Historial de la Grande Guerre" museum is a 'must visit' for those interested in the Great War. Created in 1992, by architect Henri Ciriani, it illustrates the development of the conflict. The building is characterised by the stark whiteness of the cement, inset with small cylinders, symbolic of military graves.

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