Experience the best of Besançon

The old town of Besançon sits inside a loop of the Doubs, with a limestone hill closing the open side of the loop. On that hill stands the Citadel, a fortress reworked by Vauban in the late seventeenth century, which holds a zoo and several museums and is on UNESCO's list with his other works. Below, the Roman triumphal arch of the Porte Noire and the cathedral of Saint-Jean, with its astronomical clock, mark the oldest streets.

Victor Hugo was born in Besançon in 1802, and the Lumière brothers, pioneers of cinema, were born here too. Watchmaking has been the city's craft since the 1790s, and a museum of time occupies the Palais Granvelle. The Jura mountains begin beyond the town, the royal saltworks of Arc-et-Senans lie a drive to the south-west, and Ornans, where the painter Gustave Courbet was born, sits in the Loue valley.

Comté cheese, Morbier, smoked Morteau sausage and the white and yellow wines of the Jura fill the tables of Franche-Comté. The city is at its best in the soft light of early summer and in the golden days of autumn.