Experience the best of Rennes

Rennes stands where the Ille meets the Vilaine, inland from the Breton coast. A fire in 1720 destroyed much of the city, which was rebuilt in stone to a grid plan, but the lanes around Place Sainte-Anne and Rue du Chapitre kept their half-timbered houses. The Parlement de Bretagne, a seventeenth-century palace, was badly burned in 1994 and has since been restored, and the town hall and opera house stand side by side on the central square.

The Thabor, a nineteenth-century park with a rose garden and a botanical garden, lies a short walk from the centre, and the Champs Libres cultural centre holds the Museum of Brittany. Rue Saint-Michel, lined with bars, is nicknamed the street of thirst. Beyond the city, the Arthurian forest of Brocéliande, the walled port of Saint-Malo, the castle of Vitré and Mont-Saint-Michel all make day trips.

Galette-saucisse, a grilled sausage wrapped in a warm buckwheat pancake, is the street food of Rennes, and sweet crêpes follow with Breton cider and salted-butter caramel. Rain can arrive in any month, so the city is easiest in late spring and summer, when the terraces fill up.