Loan is a city of 26 thousand¹ located in the center of Aisne Department in eastern Picardie (Picardy), France. Atop a 100 meter hill is the 246 foot Notre-Dame Cathedral (12th to 13th century). Among its decorations are statues honoring the oxen who helped pull the stones to the hill top.² In classical times in was known sometimes as Alavdanvm³ and this name may have persisted administratively when it was a prominent Frankish city.

External references

Notre-Dame Cathedral, Laon, Aisne Department, Picardie (Picardy) Region, France

Historical maps

Footnotes

1. 2010 figure from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communes_in_France_with_over_20,000_inhabitants, accessed 2/5/2015.
2. Emporis.com, accessed 4/22/2015.
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laon, accessed 4/22/2015. I changed the 'u's to 'v's as the tailed letter had not yet been invented.
4. Cities of Europe, France, [1000 or 1200] A.D., in Tertius Chandler, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth, 2nd ed. (The Edwin Mellen Press, 1987). In 1000 CE it was the largest city in what is now France. In 1200 it was smaller than Provins, which had 20 thousand inhabitants, and was equal to or larger than the minimum size listed in the table: 15 thousand.
5. I do not know the Latin name for Vermandois.