Every design for Bourges

Bourges is known first for the Cathédrale Saint-Étienne, a Gothic cathedral listed as a World Heritage Site and one of the earliest examples of the High Gothic style. Around it lies the historic capital of the Berry, the town where the future Charles VII took refuge during the Hundred Years' War and where Louis XI was born. The Palais Jacques Cœur still rises above the old streets, and the people who live among them are the Berruyers.

The town sits close to the geometric centre of mainland France, where several rivers meet: the Yèvre, the Voiselle, the Auron. The medieval centre stands on a rocky promontory above a wide stretch of marshland, once used for grazing and market gardening and now a patchwork of allotments threaded with water, barely touched by the city around it. To the south, a dam on the Auron created the Lac d'Auron in the 1970s, and fragments of Gallo-Roman wall still stand near the town hall. The Musée du Berry and the Jardin des Prés Fichaux are part of any walk through it.

If Bourges is your town, you know the climb from the marshes up to the cathedral by heart. Now it comes with you.