48h in Rouen

Two days in Rouen, historic capital of Normandy and the city of a hundred spires described by Victor Hugo. The trip opens on the cathedral of Notre-Dame, whose facade Monet painted thirty times to capture the shifting light, then the Gros-Horloge, a fourteenth-century astronomical clock set on a Renaissance arch. The Place du Vieux-Marche, where Joan of Arc was burned in 1431, now holds a modern church and a covered market. Half-timbered lanes and the Aitre Saint-Maclou, a former plague ossuary whose courtyard is carved with dances of death, close the stay. The Aitre Saint-Maclou is free to enter and remains one of the most singular places in Europe. The summer light show projected onto the cathedral can be watched from the forecourt after dark.