Dreux lies on the small river Blaise, a tributary of the Eure, about 35 km north of Chartres. Dreux station has rail connections to Argentan, Paris and Granville. The Route nationale 12 (Paris–Rennes) passes north of the town.
History
Dreux was known in ancient times as Durocassium, the capital of the Durocasses Celtic tribe. Despite the legend, its name was not related with Druids. The Romans established here a fortified camp known as Castrum Drocas.
In October 1983, the Front National won 55% of the vote in the second round of elections for the city council of Dreux, in one of its first significant electoral victories.[3]
Population
Historical population
Year
Pop.
±% p.a.
1793
5,383
—
1800
5,437
+0.14%
1806
6,037
+1.76%
1821
6,032
−0.01%
1831
6,249
+0.35%
1836
6,379
+0.41%
1841
6,367
−0.04%
1846
6,774
+1.25%
1851
6,764
−0.03%
1856
6,498
−0.80%
1861
6,940
+1.32%
1866
7,237
+0.84%
1872
7,418
+0.41%
1876
7,922
+1.66%
1881
8,254
+0.82%
1886
8,719
+1.10%
1891
9,364
+1.44%
1896
9,718
+0.74%
Year
Pop.
±% p.a.
1901
9,697
−0.04%
1906
9,928
+0.47%
1911
10,692
+1.49%
1921
10,908
+0.20%
1926
11,313
+0.73%
1931
12,200
+1.52%
1936
13,361
+1.83%
1946
14,184
+0.60%
1954
16,818
+2.15%
1962
21,588
+3.17%
1968
29,408
+5.29%
1975
33,101
+1.70%
1982
33,379
+0.12%
1990
35,230
+0.68%
1999
31,849
−1.11%
2007
32,155
+0.12%
2012
31,195
−0.60%
2017
31,044
−0.10%
Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.
Dreux has a significant Muslim population, and is estimated to be around 35%. Dreux's Muslim population consists mainly of North Africans, Arabs, Turks, and Sub-Saharan Africans. Many Muslims in Dreux experience high levels of poverty and unemployment.[6][7] One-in-four residents in the town are immigrants.[8]
In 1775, the lands of the comté de Dreux had been given to the Louis Jean Marie de Bourbon, duc de Penthièvre by his cousin Louis XVI. In 1783, the duke sold his domain of Rambouillet to Louis XVI. On 25 November of that year, in a long religious procession, Penthièvre transferred the nine caskets containing the remains of his parents, the Louis-Alexandre de Bourbon, comte de Toulouse and Marie Victoire de Noailles, comtesse de Toulouse, his wife, Marie Thérèse Félicité d'Este, Princess of Modène, and six of their seven children, from the small medieval village church next to the castle in Rambouillet, to the chapel of the Collégiale Saint-Étienne de Dreux.[9] The duc de Penthièvre died in March 1793 and his body was laid to rest in the crypt beside his parents. On 21 November of that same year, in the midst of the French Revolution, a mob desecrated the crypt and threw the ten bodies in a mass grave in the Chanoines cemetery of the Collégiale Saint-Étienne. In 1816, the duc de Penthièvre's daughter, Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon, duchesse d'Orléans, had a new chapel built on the site of the mass grave of the Chanoines cemetery, as the final resting place for her family. In 1830, Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, son of the duchesse d'Orléans, embellished the chapel which was renamed Chapelle royale de Dreux, now the necropolis of the Orléans royal family.
^G. Lenotre, Le Château de Rambouillet, six siècles d'histoire, Calmann-Lévy, Paris, 1930, reprint: Denoël, Paris, 1984, (215 pages), chapter 5: Le prince des pauvres, pp. 78–79
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