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Saint Pantaléon Troyes Rose window, Cathédrale Saint-Pierre Saint-Paul © Claire Droppert - Troyes La Champagne on its side with the head, fashioned by the Seine, facing east. The Trévois canal with its decorative fountains slices the cork north to south. West of this canal, the parallel sides of the cork’s body lie where the ancient city walls used to be. Le Bouchon is small (2 km from east to west and 820m north to south), so there’s no need for a car. Use the large (and free!) outdoor carpark in front of Le Cube, the exhibition centre on the south-west corner of Le Bouchon and explore on foot. As you meander along the cobbled pedestrian streets, look for the Maison des Chanoines on the corner of the rue Émile Zola and the rue Turenne. The front door is now uselessly on the first floor because when the house was moved here in 1969, it was reconstructed on a modern, concrete ground floor to align its roof with others. It is apparently easy to move halftimbered houses as long as you number all the beams in the dismantling phase and put them back up in the right order! Troyes’ narrowest street, the “ruelle des chats” (cat street) is an ancient misspelling. It should have been the “ruelle des chas” (eye of a needle street) which is much more Ruelle des chats © Studio OG - Troyes La Champagne Tourisme Eglise Sainte Madeleine © D. Le Névé - Troyes La Champagne Tourisme appropriate! Walk down it to reach Saint Pantaléon church, remarkable for its height, luminosity and statues. Because the nave is narrow, it makes the chestnut-wood barrelvaulted ceiling seem higher than its 28m (92ft). The glass windows, decorated with grisaille paintings, fill the 17th century top half of the nave allowing light to flood inside the building. But its most extraordinary feature is the abundant population of statues, most not sculpted for this church but rehoused here after the French Revolution. Saint-Pantaléon is one of seven remarkable churches in Le Bouchon. The oldest is Sainte Madeleine, which contains one of only 21 roodscreens in France. This early 16th century stone partition between the chancel and the nave drips with intricate, flamboyant sculptures that were all polychrome until they were whitened in the 18th century. Saint-Urbain basilica served as a grain silo and then a general store during the French Revolution, but has now resumed its place as a jewel of Gothic architecture, often compared to the Sainte Chapelle in Paris because of its vast expanses of stained-glass which, on a sunny day, make the stone walls and pillars sparkle with colours. And of course, there’s the single-towered (because money ran out to build the second one!) Saint Peter and Saint Paul cathedral which contains 1,500 m2 of some of the most sublime stained-glass windows in France. As you walk across the Trévois canal on the rue George Clémenceau towards it, look down at the modern sculpture by Belgian artist Tom Frantzen, a dog who has jumped through the bridge railings to chase five geese. On the bridge north (to your left) you’ll see the heart of Troyes, a 2-tonne, 3.5m high sculpture by 98 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 99
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