Champagne in 4 days

Where 25 French kings were crowned, from Louis VIII to Charles X; over 2,300 statues outside, including the Smiling Angel, and Chagall windows inside.

A lighthouse among the vines, built in 1909 as a publicity stunt, with a museum of the winegrower's year and 101 steps to the lantern.

A state forest with the world's largest concentration of twisted dwarf beeches, their contorted branches drooping like umbrellas; some are over 300 years old.

The village where the monk Dom Pérignon refined Champagne blending; his tomb lies in the abbey church, and wrought-iron signs line the lanes.

Some 28 km of chalk galleries dug since 1743; the guided tour covers bottle fermentation, riddling and disgorging, and ends with a tasting.

A kilometre of 19th-century mansions housing the great Champagne houses, above around a hundred kilometres of cellars holding millions of bottles.

A 4,800-hectare reservoir built in 1974 to control floods on the Marne; the church of the drowned village of Champaubert still stands on a peninsula.

An old centre shaped like a Champagne cork, packed with leaning half-timbered houses, nine churches and the Cité du Vitrail stained-glass centre.