Podtours of France
Your personal sightseeing guide
France is full of interesting places. Here's our selection of audio tours of French cathedrals and cities. Download one of our audio guides to know more about what you're seeing. While our podtours generally focus on the great Gothic cathedrals, we also show you the rest of the city; it's surprising how many French cathedrals have a splendid 'alter ego', another great church like Saint Pere in Chartres or Saint-Etienne in Beauvais. In Bourges you'll find marvellous medieval palaces, and in Rouen, amazing half timber houses.
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Beauvais - the cathedral marks the limits of Gothic engineering; so high, so ambitious, that it could never be completed.
- Bourges - this city is famed for its visionary Gothic cathedral, completely different from anything else you'll see in France. But it's also the city of the Duc de Berry, the foremost art patron of his time, and Jacques Coeur - the richest man in fifteenth-century France. Learn about these fascinating characters as you wander the streets of this fascinating medieval city.
- Chartres - probably the most famous Gothic cathedral in France, a medievalist's dream city break - you'll see fine stained glass, marvellous carving on the three great porches, and a labyrinth laid out in the floor of the nave. But there's a lot more to this hilltop city, capital of the Beauce cornfields.
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Laon Cathedral - if you're interested in architecture this is for you. We don't his name, but the master mason here was the Santiago de Calatrava of his day, integrating engineering know-how with elegance and purity of line to create probably the most elegant work of the first generation Gothic style. Learn about the stone oxen who still stand at the top of the towers, and see the original stained glass.
- Paris - our audio tour of the Ile de la Cité visits the two greatest works of the medieval period in Paris, the amazingly transparent Sainte Chapelle and the dim, echoing spaces of Notre Dame.
- Reims - home of the coronation cathedral of the French kings, and capital of Champagne. COMING SOON
- Rouen - the city where Joan of Arc was burned at the stake is also a city of fine Gothic churches and wonderful half timbered houses. We wander round the streets, visiting the cathedral, the modern church put up to Joan of Arc's memory, and some fine Renaissance palaces.