Things to do in Rouen

Landmark · City centre

The Gothic cathedral Monet painted more than thirty times, with a nineteenth-century cast-iron spire that makes it the tallest church in France.

Local tip: The facade is the point and the light on it changes completely through the day — which is exactly why Monet did the series. Come at three different hours before deciding you have seen it. The summer projection show on the facade after dark is free and much better than that description suggests.

Neighborhood · Between the cathedral and the Place du Vieux-Marché

Several hundred half-timbered houses in a dense medieval grid, with the great astronomical clock spanning the main street on its own arch.

Local tip: Everyone walks rue du Gros-Horloge. Go one street either side — rue Saint-Romain, rue Damiette, rue Eau-de-Robec with its stream running down the middle — and the crowds vanish while the buildings get better.

Culture · Behind Saint-Maclou church

A sixteenth-century plague cemetery courtyard, its timber galleries carved with skulls, bones and gravediggers' tools.

Local tip: Free, open through the day, and almost nobody in it. Look up at the carvings on the beams rather than at the courtyard — the whole macabre programme is at first-floor height. The cat mummified in the wall is signposted and yes, it is real.

Landmark · West end of the old town

The square where Joan of Arc was burned in 1431, now covered by a startling 1979 church whose roof is shaped like a flame and a boat.

Local tip: The church divides opinion violently and is worth going inside for the sixteenth-century stained glass rescued from a bombed church and reset in it. The Historial Jeanne d'Arc in the former archbishop's palace runs the trial and rehabilitation as an actual courtroom argument, which is a far better hour than the square itself.

Culture · Along the river, both banks

Rebuilt riverside promenades on the left bank and the working port beyond, plus the tall-ships gathering that periodically takes the whole waterfront over.

Local tip: The left-bank quays are where the city actually spends a summer evening — bars in the old hangars, skate park, running route. When the Armada is on, come on a weekday morning rather than a weekend: the ships are open, the queues are half an hour instead of three.

Nature · Downstream, 10–30 km west

The looping river below the city, past chalk cliffs, ferry crossings, Flaubert's pavilion at Croisset and the ruined abbey of Jumièges.

Local tip: There are free chain ferries — bacs — across the Seine at several points, which is the local way to make a loop by bike or car without a bridge. Jumièges at opening time on a weekday, with the mist still on the river, is the single best morning within half an hour of Rouen and almost nobody does it.