Chaumont — Chaumont Map Poster & Print

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Chaumont Map Poster & Print

Chaumont sits on a limestone promontory above the meeting of the Marne and the Suize. From above, the old town is a tight, irregular cluster of streets on the high ground. The valleys fall away on either side, and the newer districts spread across the plateau and down the slopes. The shape is easy to read: a town built for its commanding position, with the rivers marking its edges.

The best-known feature on the map is the railway viaduct, opened in the mid-nineteenth century. It carries the Paris–Mulhouse line across the Suize valley on several levels of stone arches. On paper it shows as a single straight stroke. As prefecture of Haute-Marne, Chaumont also has the administrative grid of a French departmental seat, with boulevards following the lines of the old fortifications.

Chaumont has long been linked to graphic design and has hosted an international poster festival for decades, which gives a Chaumont map poster a certain logic. In black and white, the promontory, the two river valleys and the straight line of the viaduct make a clear composition. The dense core, the looser outer streets and the open valley floors each come through in a different tone.