Angouleme

Angouleme stands on a plateau above the Charente inside a ring of ramparts that can be walked for the view over the valley. Since 1974 it has hosted the Festival International de la Bande Dessinee each January, the largest comics event in Europe, and the association went deeper than a festival: a national comics centre with a museum and archive occupies converted riverside warehouses, an art school teaches the form, and around thirty large murals painted on blank gable walls turn the streets into an open-air gallery of French and Belgian comics art. The cathedral has a carved Romanesque west front with about seventy figures.

History

Before the Romans the plateau held an oppidum called Iculisma, and in Roman times the town, which the poet Ausonius thought small, prospered from river trade; it became the capital of a civitas at the end of the 3rd or in the 4th century, when a rampart enclosing 27 hectares was built, kept up until the 13th century, and a large bath complex has been found under the courthouse. Its first bishop, Saint Ausone, dates from the 3rd century. Held by the Arian Visigoths, the town was besieged by Clovis in 507 and taken in 508, and he replaced the old cathedral of Saint-Saturnin with a new one dedicated to Saint-Pierre, of which two carved marble capitals survive in the present apse. In 2019 an engraved stone of about 12,000 years ago, showing a horse and other animals, was found near the station (Wikipedia, Angoulême).

What you'll find

• The painted walls - around thirty large comic murals on gable ends.
• The comics museum - the national collection in riverside warehouses.
• The ramparts - a walkable circuit above the Charente valley.
• The cathedral facade - a Romanesque front carrying about seventy figures.

When to go

April to October for walking the murals; the January festival is the event but fills the town completely and needs booking months ahead. The museum closes Mondays.

Before you go

Festival week makes accommodation almost impossible. The murals are scattered and need the map from the tourist office. Parts of the lower town are ordinary.

Nearby

Cognac lies northwest; Aubeterre is south.

Key facts