Chichester City Council has just completed a twinning ceremony with the
German city of Speyer. Rodney Duggua tells the story.
Before describing Chichester’s latest twinning (we also have civic links with Malta, Chartres in France and Ravenna in Italy), it will help to understand where Speyer is located and what makes it so very special. You can see on the map that Speyer is on the banks of the River Rhine, north of Strasbourg at the same latitude as Paris – so not far from Chichester.
With a population a little over 50,000 Speyer is one of Germany’s oldest towns dating to the Romans. Indeed, the original Roman name for Speyer is Noviomagus as it was for Chichester. Speyer has a cathedral designated a World Heritage site by UNESCO and has a great deal of history, heritage and character. It’s a fitting civic match to twin with Chichester.

Twinning with Chichester

What encouraged links with Speyer is that Chartres and Ravenna have civic ties with Speyer, so why not with Chichester as well? The reasoning behind this caution is that Speyer was already twinned with Spalding in Lincolnshire, a link that is now defunct. This has provided Chichester with an opportunity to fill a ‘civic gap’. The outcome is that Chichester City Council formally agreed in September 2019 to explore links with Speyer. Nearly three years later, with Covid travel restrictions lifted, Speyer’s representatives came on a fact-finding visit to Chichester in August 2022 – their Deputy Mayor and Director of Tourism.
The weather held fair to show Chichester and its environs at their very best. There was a packed programme. Speyer’s representatives fell in love with our city and eagerly posed
the question of ‘when can we sign on the dotted line?’  Both Councils had to meet to ratify the formal twinning decision, which was done within weeks of each other last autumn.