Dinan

The cobbled lane drops so steeply towards the river that the rooftops stagger down the slope in tiers, half-timbered façades leaning forward as if watching the port below. Dinan, in France's Brittany, took its position on the cliff above the Rance seriously — nearly three kilometres of ramparts still circle the hilltop — and the descent to the harbour is one of the best short walks in Brittany.

Dinan stands on a granite spur high above the Rance, a medieval town between land and sea with its thirteenth-century ramparts, fourteen towers and four monumental gates still intact and its fourteenth-century château rising over them. Inside the walls the streets are lined with half-timbered houses from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, and the Rue du Jerzual, the old road down to the port, drops through a lane of them now taken over by artists' studios and craft workshops to the quay where the tidal river once carried salt and linen and now carries pleasure boats. The Thursday market fills the Place du Guesclin, the square named for the Breton knight Bertrand du Guesclin who fought a famous duel here in 1359, with cider, buckwheat, andouille and salted butter. The climb back up earns the view from the ramparts.