Pérouges

The cobbles are polished to a glaze — centuries of feet have turned rough stone into something that catches the light like wet glass. Pérouges sits inside its own walls above the Ain plain in eastern France, a medieval village where the fifteenth century never quite ended, and the smell of warm galette drifts from the square, sugar caramelising on butter.

You enter through the Porte d'En Haut, the upper gate, and the walls close behind you: a hilltop village of stone houses, workshops and a central square around its old lime tree, all of it looking much as it did five hundred years ago because it was rescued from near-abandonment early last century and restored rather than rebuilt. It has been listed among France's loveliest villages since 1988. The galette de Pérouges — a thin round of sweet buttery dough, sugared and baked until the edges catch — is the thing to eat here, warm from the oven on the square, with the wines of the surrounding Bugey, among them the gently sparkling Cerdon. Between Lyon and Geneva and a short hop from the motorway, it is close enough for a half-day and walled tightly enough to feel like a secret.