- Département
- Marne (Grand Est region)
- Site
- Area around Sézanne, arrondissement of Épernay, canton of Sézanne-Brie et Champagne
- Inhabitants
- 237 (as of 2023)
- Source
- Wikipedia, eigene Zusammenfassung
Fontaine-Denis-Nuisy is a small village in the south of the Marne département, near Sézanne. It stands for the quiet, rural hinterland of Champagne, with fields, woodland and permanent crops.
Location
Fontaine-Denis-Nuisy lies in the Marne département in the Grand Est region. Administratively, the commune belongs to the arrondissement of Épernay and the canton of Sézanne-Brie et Champagne. It has 237 inhabitants (as of 2023) and is a rural commune with scattered buildings, well away from any larger towns. The nearest Météo-France weather station is at Romilly-sur-Seine, about 13 kilometres away as the crow flies.
The name recalls two places: Fontaine-Denis and the former village of Nuisy. The two were merged into a single commune in 1846. The inhabitants call themselves Fontenats and Fontenates.
Landscape and viticulture
The commune's land is shaped by farming. Just under half of the area is arable land (49.5 per cent), and a good third is woodland (37.7 per cent). Permanent crops account for 9.8 per cent, and only 2.3 per cent is built up. In Champagne, permanent crops mean above all vines. The source, however, says nothing more specific about how the land is used, so this note will have to do.
The commune is drained by several small ditches in the Seine catchment area. The climate is temperate and oceanic, with fresh summers and cold winters. At the Romilly-sur-Seine station the annual mean is 11.2 °C and rainfall is around 620 millimetres a year. It was also there that 42.3 °C was recorded on 25 July 2019, a sign of just how hot individual summers can get in this region.
It has 237 inhabitants (as of 2023) and is a rural commune with scattered buildings, well away from any larger towns.
What to see
For visitors travelling off the beaten track, away from the well-known wine villages, two stops are worth the detour, both protected as a Monument historique:
- The Nuisy dolmen, known as the "Pierre Sainte-Geneviève", has been listed since 1887.
- The church of Fontaine-Denis has a late 15th-century mural of the Last Judgement. It was restored in 2004.
There is an open question about the church: the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux is said to have restored or newly built buildings in Fontaine-Denis in the 1760s, possibly including the church. According to the source, this is not confirmed.
Notable people
The politician Nicolas Dondeau was born in Fontaine-Denis in 1752. He was mayor of Douai from 1794 to 1795 and minister of police in 1798. He died in 1834.
A note for wine lovers
Fontaine-Denis-Nuisy is neither grand cru nor premier cru, and it is not a place with great champagne houses. Anyone who wants to get to know Champagne in its rural breadth can use the village as a stopover on a drive through the south of the Marne, perhaps combined with a visit to Sézanne. It shows that Champagne is more than its famous vineyard sites: a stretch of countryside with fields, woodland, small villages and centuries of history.
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