Saint-Quentin (French: [sɛ̃ kɑ̃tɛ̃] ⓘ; Picard: Saint-Kintin; older Dutch: Sint-Kwintens [sɪnt ˈkʋɪntəns]) is a city in the Aisne department, Hauts-de-France, northern France.

The city was founded by the Romans, in the Augustean period, to replace the oppidum of Vermand (11 km away) as the capital of Viromandui (Celtic Belgian people who occupied the region).

During the late Roman period, it is possible that the civitas capital was transferred back to Vermand (whose name comes from Veromandis); almost nothing relating to the fourth century has been found in Saint-Quentin.

[citation needed] During the early Middle Ages, a major monastery, now the Basilica of Saint-Quentin, developed, based on pilgrimage to the tomb of Quentin, a Roman Christian who came to evangelize the region and was martyred in Augusta, giving rise to a new town which was named after him.

The city grew rapidly: the "bourgeois" organized themselves and obtained, in the second half of the 12th century (a very early date), a municipal charter, which guaranteed their commune a large degree of autonomy.

It was also a centre of commerce boosted by its position on the border of the kingdom of France, between the Champagne fairs and the cities of Flanders (wine exportation, etc.

It also benefited from its location in the heart of a rich agricultural region (trade of grain and "guède" (woad), a high-value blue dye).

Ravaged by the plague on several occasions, its population decreased, while its economy was in crisis: its fair was increasingly irrelevant, and agricultural production diminished.

In the mid-17th century, the city escaped the sieges, but suffered the horrors of wars ravaging the Picardy region, accompanied by the plague (in 1636, 3,000 people died, out of perhaps 10,000 inhabitants) and famine.

In the second half of the 17th century, the conquests of Louis XIV moved the border away from Saint- Quentin, and it lost much of its strategic role.

The Gare de Saint-Quentin is the railway station, offering connections to Paris, Reims, Amiens, Lille and several regional destinations.