Boulogne-sur-Mer, a fortified seaport in the French dep. of Pas-de-Calais, situated at the mouth of the Liane in the English Channel, 27 miles SW. of Calais, and 158 N. by W. of Paris by rail. The town consists of two parts - Upper and Lower Boulogne. The upper town, formerly strongly fortified, contains the hotel-de-ville, on the site of the castle where Godfrey de Bouillon was born in 1061, and the former cathedral, rebuilt (1827-66) in the Italian style, with a dome 300 feet high, and with a miraculous image of the Virgin. The lower town, the seaport proper, is newer, more populous, and more lively, inhabited chiefly by merchants, mariners, and fishermen. Boulogne has extensive and excellent saltwater baths; and, on account of its fine sands, it is a favourite, though somewhat expensive resort for sea-bathing. The English residents have recently become much less numerous. Pop. (1S72) 39,700; (1901) 44,416, actively engaged in the manufacture of linen, cordage, iron, steel pens and buttons, oil, soap, and chemical products. Boulogne is the chief station in France of the North Sea fisheries. It has an active coasting trade, and ranks with Calais as one of the nearest and most frequented places of passage between France and England, steamers plying daily to London, and twice a day to Folkestone. Paris is reached by railway in 4 1/2 hours. About 5000 vessels, most of them English, of over 1,000,000 tons burden, enter or clear the port annually. The principal imports are woollen, cotton, and silk material; the exports' are manufactured fabrics, leather, and wine. A new and vast deep-sea harbour was constructed in 1SS0-1904. The works include outer moles or breakwaters with a length of over 4400 yards, and an inner mole or traverse, 1200 yards long and 200 wide, alongside which steamships may lie at all states of the tide. The Portus Gesoriacus of the Romans, and later Bononia or Bolonia, Boulogne in 1435 camo into the possession of the Uuke of Burgundy, and was united with the crown of France by Louis XL in 1477. It was taken by the English in 1544, and restored to the French in 1550. Here, in 1804, Napoleon encamped 180,000 men and collected 2400 transports, ready at any favourable moment to swoop down on Britain. The poets Churchill and Campbell, and Lo Sage, the author of Gil Blas, died here.