Capital of the Landes Department, Mont-de-Marsan is a medieval bastide town where the Douze and Andou Rivers meet. It was created from scratch as a walled settlement in the 1100s, and a few fortified houses and scraps of the old walls remain from this time. For hundreds of years Mont-de-Marsan flourished through trade, shipping Armagnac …
Stylish and arty Montreuil is an eastern suburb of Paris just up from the Bois de Vincennes. Historically this was a place of industry and agriculture, and many homes in this up-and-coming area are set in converted warehouses and mills. It’s a neighbourhood where you can rummage though the flea market for vintage treasures and …
The capital of Brittany’s Côtes-d’Armor department is an unpretentious town that doesn’t concern itself too much with tourism. But all the same there are a lot of things to win you over in Saint-Brieuc. The old centre has venerable granite buildings and half-timbered houses, while the Légué Port on the Gouët River Estuary resonates with …
A well-to-do western suburb of Paris, Courbevoie is in touch with the centre of the city, but has an easy, residential feel. There are some understated museums to check out, housed in pavilions that were made for the Exposition Universelle in 1878. Courbevoie also contains some of La Défense, the city’s modern banking district, so …
Just shy of the Belgian border in the Nord department, Valenciennes is a city noted for culture and creativity, which gave it the nickname, “Athens of the North”. For hundreds of years this relatively small place churned out painters, sculptors and architects who helped shape French culture forever. You can sample the works of figures …
Mostly known as a ferry port, Cherbourg-Octeville has a lot more strings to its bow: The Cité de la Mer museum for example will take you back to the golden age of transatlantic travel and is housed in a cavernous Art Deco ocean liner terminal. Cherbourg also has the largest man-made harbour in the world, …
In the northwestern suburbs of Paris, Cergy is part of a new town that was built to answer a housing crisis after the war. Cergy was joined to its neighbouring commune, creating the Cergy-Pontoise conurbation, whose population rocketed from just a couple of thousand in the 1950s to 200,000 today. So given the town’s youth, …
In Reunion’s Sud Sauvage “Wild South”, Saint-Joseph is a region with black sandy beaches on its coast and scenery inland that will leave you lost for words. Two rivers course through the area, the Langevin and the Rivière des Remparts, both essential in their own way. The Langevin is a tropical idyll with waterfalls, cascades …
An hour north of Toulouse, the city of Montauban in the Tarn-et-Garonne Department shares its neighbour’s graceful brick architecture. Almost everything is made from this red material, lending the city a lovely pink glow. And in the brickwork you’ll learn the stories of the sieges and battles fought in these streets during the Wars of …
An outlying southeastern suburb of Paris, Melun is a small town with a big heritage. In Melun’s backyard are the lavish, dumbounding palaces of Vaux-le-Vicomte and Fontainebleau. Not only are these properties stupendous to see, they are both steeped in enough intrigue and political manoeuvring to keep you rapt for hours. But you can also …