Senlis

Senlis lies north of Paris between the forests of Halatte and Chantilly. Its royal castle and Gothic cathedral recall a time when French kings regularly stayed in the town. The Hundred Years' War and plague brought hardship, and Senlis rebuilt slowly in the later fifteenth century as its defences were strengthened. In 1493 Charles VIII and Maximilian of Austria concluded the Treaty of Senlis here, settling territorial questions arising from their earlier conflict. The cathedral, begun in the twelfth century, acquired a rebuilt transept in the sixteenth. Religious wars and recurrent plague again troubled the town in that century. Its old houses and religious buildings bear witness to the fortunes of a royal and episcopal centre beyond Paris.