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Rouen is a city on the River Seine in the north of France. It is the capital of the region of Upper Normandy and the historic capital city of Normandy. One of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe, it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages. It was one of the capitals of the Anglo-Norman dynasties, which ruled both England and large parts of modern France from the 11th to the 15th centuries. It was here that Joan of Arc was executed in 1431. People from Rouen are called Rouennais.

Unknown to Julius Caesar, Rouen was founded by the Gaulish tribe of the Veliocasses, who controlled a large area in the lower Seine valley, which retains a trace of their name as the Vexin. They called it Ratumacos; the Romans called it Rotomagus. Roman Rotomagus was the second city of Gallia Lugdunensis after Lugdunum (Lyon) itself. Under the reorganization of the empire by Diocletian, Rouen became the chief city of the divided province of Gallia Lugdunensis II and reached the apogee of its Roman development, with an amphitheatre and thermae of which the foundations remain. In the 5th century, it became the seat of a bishopric and later a capital of Merovingian Neustria.

From their first incursion into the lower valley of the Seine in 841, the Vikings overran Rouen until some of them finally settled and founded a colony led by Rollo (Hrolfr), who was nominated count of Rouen by the king of the Franks in 911. In the 10th century Rouen became the capital of the Duchy of Normandy and residence of the dukes, until William the Conqueror established his castle at Caen. In the early 12th century the city's population reached the size of 30,000.[4] In 1150, Rouen received its founding charter, which permitted self-government. During the 12th century, Rouen was probably the site of a Jewish yeshiva. At that time, about 6,000 Jews lived in the town, comprising about 20% of the total population. In addition, there were a large number of Jews scattered about another 100 communities in Normandy. The well-preserved remains of a medieval Jewish building, that could be a yeshiva, were discovered in the 1970s under the Rouen Law Courts.

In 1200, a fire destroyed part of the old Romanesque cathedral, leaving St Romain's tower, the side porches of the front, and part of the nave. New work on the present Gothic cathedral of Rouen was begun, in the nave, transept, choir, and the lowest section of the lantern tower. On 24 June 1204, Philip II Augustus of France entered Rouen and annexed Normandy to the French Kingdom. The fall of Rouen meant the end of Normandy's sovereign status. He demolished the Norman castle and replaced it with his own, the Château Bouvreuil, built on the site of the Gallo-Roman amphitheatre. A textile industry developed based on wool imported from England, for which the northern County of Flanders and Duchy of Brabant were constantly fierce but worthy competitors, and finding its market in the Champagne fairs. Rouen also depended for its prosperity on the river traffic of the Seine, on which it enjoyed a monopoly that reached as far upstream as Paris. Wine and wheat were exported to England, with tin and wool received in return.

In the 14th century urban strife threatened the city: in 1291, the mayor was assassinated and noble residences in the city were pillaged. Philip IV reimposed order and suppressed the city's charter and the lucrative monopoly on river traffic, but he was quite willing to allow the Rouennais to repurchase their former liberties in 1294. In 1306, he decided to expel the Jewish community of Rouen, which then numbered some five or six thousand in the city of 40,000 people. In 1389, another urban revolt of the underclass broke out, the Harelle. It was part of a widespread rebellion in France that year and was suppressed with the withdrawal of Rouen's charter and river-traffic privileges once more.

During the Hundred Years' War, on 19 January 1419, Rouen and its population of 70,000 surrendered to Henry V of England, who annexed Normandy once again to the Plantagenet domains. But Rouen did not go quietly: Alain Blanchard hung English prisoners from the walls, for which he was summarily executed; the Canon and Vicar General of Rouen, Robert de Livet, became a hero for excommunicating the English king, resulting shortly after in de Livet's himself imprisonment for five years in England. Rouen became the capital city of English power in occupied France and when the Duke of Bedford, John of Lancaster bought Joan of Arc from his ally, the Duke of Burgundy who had been keeping her in jail since May 1430, she was sent to be tried in this city on Christmas 1430. After a long trial by a church court, sentenced to be burned at the stake. The sentence was carried out on 30 May 1431 in this city, where most inhabitants supported the Duke of Burgundy, Joan of Arc's royal enemy. The king of France Charles VII recaptured the town in 1449, 18 years after the death of Joan of Arc and after 30 years of English occupation. In that same year the young Henry VI was crowned king of England and France in Paris before coming to Rouen where he was acclaimed by the crowds.

The naval dockyards, where activity had been slowed down by the 100 years war, developed again as did the church of Saint-Maclou which had been started under the English occupation, and was finally finished during the Renaissance period. The nave of the church of Saint Ouen was completed at last, but without the façade flanked by twin towers. The salle des pas-perdus (a sort of waiting room or ante-room) of the present law courts was built during this time. The whole building was built in a flamboyant style into which the first decorative elements typical of the Renaissance style right at the beginning of the 16th century had been incorporated. At that time Rouen was the most populous city in the realm after Paris, Marseille and Lyon. Rouen was also one of the Norman cradles of the artistic Renaissance, in particular the one under the patronage of the archbishops and financiers of the town.

The economic upturn of the town at the end of the 15th century was mainly due to the cloth industry, but also to the development of the silk industry and metallurgy. The fishermen of Rouen went as far afield as the Baltic to fish for herrings. Salt was imported from Portugal and Guérande. Cloth was sold in Spain which also provided wool, and the Medici family made Rouen into the main port for the resale of Roman alum. At the beginning of the 16th century Rouen became the main French port through which trade was conducted with Brasil, principally for the import of cloth dyes. By 1500 ten printing presses had been installed in the town following the installation of the first one sixteen years earlier. In the years following 1530, part of the population of Rouen embraced Calvinism. The members of the Reformed Church who represented a quarter to a third of the total population, a significant part but still a minority. In 1550, King Henri II staged a triumphant entry into Rouen, modeled on the ancient Roman triumph and specifically compared to Pompey's third triumph of 61 BC at Rome: "No less pleasing and delectable than the third triumph of Pompey... magnificent in riches and abounding in the spoils of foreign nations". It was not enough, however, to long sustain royal authority in the city.

From 1560 onwards tensions rose between the Protestant and Catholic communities, when the Massacre of Vassy set off the first of the French Wars of Religion. On 15 April 1562 the Protestants entered the town hall and ejected the King's personal representative. In May there was an outbreak of Iconoclasm (statue smashing). On 10 May the Catholic members of the town council fled Rouen. The Catholics captured, however, the Fort of Saint Catherine which overlooked the town. Both sides resorted to terror tactics. At this juncture the Protestant town authorities requested help from Queen Elizabeth I of England. In accordance with the Hampton Court Treaty which they had signed with Condé on 20 September 1562, the English sent troops to support the Protestants, and these occupied Le Havre. On 26 October 1562 French Royalist troops retook Rouen and pillaged it for three days. The news of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day reached Rouen at the end of August 1572. Hennequier tried to avoid a massacre of the Protestants by shutting them up in various prisons. But between 17 and 20 September the crowds forced the gates of the prisons and murdered the Protestants that they found inside.

The town was attacked on several occasions by Henry IV, but it resisted, notably during the siege of December 1591 to May 1592, with the help of a Spanish army led by the Duke of Parma (see Siege of Rouen (1591)). The permanent exchequer of Normandy, which had been installed in Rouen in 1499 by George of Amboise, was transformed into a regional administrative assembly by Francis I in 1515 and up to the time of the Revolution was the administrative centre of the region. It had judicial, legislative and executive powers in Norman affairs and was only subordinate to the Privy Council. It also had power to govern French Canada. The 16th and the 18th centuries brought prosperity to the town through the textile trade and the increased use of the port facilities. In 1703 the Norman Chamber of Commerce was formed. Although it did not have a university, Rouen became an important intellectual centre by reason of its reputed schools of higher learning. In 1734, a school of surgery (second only to that of Paris founded in 1724) was founded. In 1758 a new hospital was opened to the West of the town which replaced the old medieval one which had grown too small, and which had been situated on the south side of the cathedral.

During the First World War the British used Rouen as a supply base and there were many military hospitals. The city was heavily damaged during World War II - approximately 45% was destroyed. In June 1940 the area between the Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Seine river burned for 48 hours because the Germans did not allow firemen access to the fire. Other areas were destroyed between March and August 1944 just before and during the Battle of Normandy, which ended on the left bank of the Seine with the destruction of several regiments belonging to the German 7th Army. Rouen's cathedral and several significant monuments were damaged by Allied bombing. During the German occupation, Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine had its headquarters located in a château on what is now the Rouen Business School (École Supérieure de Commerce de Rouen). The city was liberated by the Canadians on 30 August 1944 after the breakout from Normandy.