Angoulême

Comics Museum

It all began in 1974, when Angoulême held the first International Comics Salon, which became the International Comics Festival, bringing together artists and hundreds of thousands of visitors every year at the end of January. The town then acquired a national centre, followed by the Cité Internationale de la Bande Dessinée et de l'Image, a public institution that combines a museum, a heritage library, an arthouse cinema, a specialist bookshop and a residence for comic artists. The museum moved in June 2009 into the Magelis chais, former warehouses of wine and spirits merchants on the banks of the Charente. Its collection is the largest in Europe: more than 25,000 original pages and more than 265,000 printed items, from the illustrated press of the 19th century to graphic novels. The permanent exhibition is being redesigned, with reopening announced for late 2027; in the meantime, temporary exhibitions follow one another, including a major Thorgal retrospective until 2 May 2027. A footbridge crosses the Charente to the Vaisseau Moebius, which houses the library and the cinema.

Painted walls trail

In the 1980s, the town began handing its blank walls over to artists invited to the festival, to take comics out of the albums. Today there are some thirty painted walls, which places Angoulême, according to its tourist office, just behind Brussels for this kind of trail. The murals cover the gable ends of buildings, car park walls and entire façades, often in trompe-l'œil, playing with the existing windows and doors. You come across popular heroes, Gaston Lagaffe, Lucky Luke, Titeuf, Boule et Bill, Blake and Mortimer, but also more personal creations by artists such as François Schuiten, François Boucq or the duo Dupuy and Berberian. The tourist office hands out a free map and the Loopi app offers the digital trail, with the names of the artists and the story of each wall. The full circuit takes half a day of walking, between the upper town and the lower districts, with some serious climbs, but it can be split up. The town is also recognised as a UNESCO Creative City of Literature, which includes comics.

Ramparts of Angoulême

Angoulême is an acropolis town, set on a limestone spur overlooking a meander of the Charente, about a hundred kilometres north-east of Bordeaux. The plateau, occupied since the Neolithic, became a Gaulish oppidum and then a Gallo-Roman town enclosed, around the end of the 3rd century or the beginning of the 4th, by a 2,280-metre wall protecting some 25 hectares. In 867, Count Vulgrin restored it against Viking raids, and the Counts of Angoulême strengthened it in the Middle Ages. In the 19th century, the town knocked down its gates and lowered the walls to expand, but kept their line, listed as a historic monument in 1958. The ramparts promenade follows the crest of the plateau, with viewpoints to the north over the Charente valley and the Île de Saint-Cybard, to the west over the hillsides and to the south over the countryside. It is also a racing backdrop: every year in September, the Circuit des Remparts, created in 1939, sends vintage cars round the streets that border the upper town.

Angoulême Cathedral

Built on the initiative of Bishop Girard II, Saint-Pierre Cathedral was begun around 1110 and consecrated in 1128. It belongs to the family of domed Romanesque churches of Aquitaine, like Saint-Front in Périgueux: three domes on pendentives cover the single nave, with another dome over the crossing. The west front is one of the richest in French Romanesque art, with dozens of figures spread over four registers that blend the Ascension and the Last Judgement: Christ in Glory sits enthroned at the top in a mandorla, surrounded by the symbols of the four evangelists, while the elect and the damned occupy the lower registers. The north bell tower, 59 metres high over six storeys, has kept only its original first level. From 1852 to 1879, the architect Paul Abadie carried out a heavy restoration, rebuilt the crossing dome and added a triangular gable and two pinnacles to the façade, choices that were debated even at the time. The bare interior gives the volumes their full scale.

Paper Museum

Thanks to the purity of the waters of the Charente and its tributaries, the Angoumois has been making paper since the late Middle Ages, and its paper mills were exporting to Holland as early as the 17th century. In the 19th century, Angoulême specialised in cigarette paper, with brands known all over the world, which employed thousands of workers and commissioned posters from the great illustrators of the day. The Paper Museum opened in 1988 in the Lacroix factory, whose buildings straddle the Charente and link Rue de Bordeaux to the Île Saint-Cybard. The Charente Confluences exhibition explores in five themes the role of the river, the stages of papermaking, the other industries of the valley and the history of the site. The collections bring together samples, packaging, booklets of cigarette papers, advertising posters and contemporary graphic works. Holding the Tourisme et Handicap label, the museum is accessible to all. Full price €3.70, free for under-18s.

Château de La Rochefoucauld

La Rochefoucauld, 22 km east of Angoulême, gave its name to one of the oldest families of the French nobility, which still owns the castle after more than a thousand years. The site has commanded the crossing of the Tardoire since the 11th century, the date of the square keep whose bulk still dominates the whole. In the Renaissance, François II de La Rochefoucauld turned the fortress into a pleasure residence: the inner courtyard was adorned with three storeys of arcaded galleries, and a great spiral staircase serves the apartments. François VI de La Rochefoucauld, author of the Maxims, stayed here. The self-guided visit takes in the courtyard, the rooms and the staircase, and the guided tour included in the ticket opens up the libraries and the family archive room. Nicknamed the pearl of the Angoumois, the castle is best seen from the bridge over the Tardoire. The small town around it is the capital of the charentaise, the felt slipper born in the region, and a few workshops still make them.