Angoulême in 4 days

Housed since 2009 in former merchants' warehouses on the Charente, the comics museum holds a major collection of original comic art.

Angoulême was a French capital of paper, cigarette paper above all; the museum fills a former paper mill built over the Charente.

A domed Romanesque cathedral consecrated in 1128, whose west front carries dozens of carved figures around the Ascension and the Last Judgement.

Walls that almost ring the hilltop town above a bend of the Charente, following the line of the late Roman enclosure.

Paul Abadie's 19th-century town hall keeps two towers of the counts' castle; around it lie Place du Minage, the iron market hall and cobbled lanes.

Around thirty comic-strip murals by artists such as Dupuy and Berberian, Boucq and Schuiten, featuring Lucky Luke, Titeuf and Blake and Mortimer.

Still owned by the family of the author of the Maxims, with an 11th-century keep, a Renaissance courtyard and a monumental spiral staircase.

Cobbled lanes of merchants' houses lead down to the river, their walls blackened by a fungus that feeds on the evaporating spirit, the angels' share.