Metz

Industrial city and administrative centre of the département of Moselle and of the Lorraine region of northeast France, on the River Moselle some 320 km/199 mi east of Paris; population (1999) 123,700. The town has a large trade in agricultural produce, particularly tobacco, and has a coal-mining district to the northeast. It has metal foundries and also produces cars, food products, textiles, and leather goods, especially shoes. Part of the Holy Roman Empire 870-1552, it became one of the great frontier fortresses of France, and was in German hands 1871-1918.

Metz is a spacious city with many ancient buildings, and has a university, founded in 1971. It is the seat of a bishopric; the large Gothic cathedral of St-Etienne, which is partly 13th century, contains an early 17th-century bell weighing over 10 tonnes. The poet Verlaine was born here in 1844.

History The chief town of the Gallic Mediomatrici, it was known to the Romans as Divodurum. Under the Merovingians it was the capital of Austrasia (the eastern Frankish kingdom). It was part of the Holy Roman Empire 870-1552 before being taken by the French and formally ceded to them in 1648 by the peace of Westphalia. It was annexed to Germany in 1871 under the Treaty of Frankfurt after the Franco-Prussian War, and restored to France in 1918 under the Treaty of Versailles.