The town of Laon seems to have shrugged off its modern neighbourhoods - the housing of most of its inhabitants, its communications networks and its new commercial centres - letting them slide off the plateau down to the surrounding plain below, formerly occupied by market gardens. Emerging abruptly from the otherwise gentle relief that characterises the Paris Basin, the medieval city still survives on top of the plateau, miraculously spared by the destruction of the wars of the twentieth century. Its slopes are still draped in a mantle of greenery and the town is still hemmed in by the stone ring of its fortifications. The church spires that used to bristle along these fortifications have now disappeared, giving Laon a flat, square silhouette against the skyline. Within the upper town the dense and sometimes whimsical pattern of streets, gates, houses and town residences spreads out harmoniously, encompassed by remains of the town's prestigious past, traces of the men who made it.
They stand like so many book ends at Laon's extremities: to the east, the incomparable twelfth- and thirteenth-century Notre-Dame Cathedral and the Saint-Jean Abbey, dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; to the west and the south, the Saint-Martin Abbey (twelfth to eighteenth centuries) and the Saint-Vincent Abbey (eighteenth century). With new functions today, these monuments still watch over the old royal and religious centre, the bustling townscape and open spaces around. Inside this strictly defined space, the visitor who is curious for such discoveries, and ready to be guided to them, may witness the unfolding of eight centuries of urban life and architecture.