Things to do
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Base sous-marine
German forces built this submarine pen from 1941 with concrete walls several metres thick, and it proved too solid to demolish. Four of its flooded bays now carry the Bassins des Lumières, where paintings are projected floor to ceiling and reflected in the water. The scale of the structure does as much work as the show.
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Basilique Saint-Michel
Flamboyant Gothic in a quarter that has been the immigrant and market end of town for generations, with a detached bell tower that is the tallest in southern France. The square around it holds a flea market on Sunday mornings and North African cafes the rest of the week. Climbing the tower is seasonal.
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Cathédrale Saint-André
Eleanor of Aquitaine married the future Louis VII here in 1137, a wedding that briefly joined half of France to the crown before her second marriage handed it to England. The nave is high and unusually plain; the carved north door is the piece to look at. Its bell tower stands apart from it.
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Cité du Vin
A curved gold tower upriver, opened in 2016, given to wine as a world subject, so the galleries move from Georgia to Chile and are built around smell, sound and film. A glass of something is included at the top, with the river below.
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Grand-Théâtre
Twelve columns and a row of muses above them, finished in 1780 and copied afterwards for the staircase of the Paris opera. It still works as an opera house and the interior, blue and gold under a painted ceiling, is only reachable on a ticket or a guided visit. The cafe terrace under the colonnade is public.
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Jardin public
Laid out in 1746 as a French formal garden and redone a century later in the English manner, with a serpentine water, a botanical school in beds and the natural history museum inside the railings. It is the green space the northern quarters actually use. Gates close at dusk and the hours change by season.
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Les Chartrons
The wine merchants' quarter north of the centre, where Irish, German and Dutch traders kept their cellars and their houses above them along one long straight street. Antique dealers took over the ground floors, then galleries and coffee roasters. A Sunday market runs on the quay. It is the part of town that feels lived in.
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Miroir d'eau
Granite laid flat and flooded to two centimetres, so the palaces opposite appear upside down in it, then drained and refilled as mist every twenty minutes or so. Children treat it as a paddling pool from spring onwards. It runs seasonally, roughly April to October, and empties overnight for cleaning.
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Musée d'Aquitaine
The regional history collection, and the one that treats the difficult part directly: a permanent gallery on Bordeaux and the Atlantic slave trade, which the city was slow to acknowledge and now documents in detail. Prehistoric carvings from the Dordogne and Roman altars fill the earlier rooms. Free for the permanent collection.
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Musée des Beaux-Arts
Two wings flanking the garden of the town hall, holding Titian, Rubens and Delacroix, and then the local claim: Odilon Redon and Rosa Bonheur, both born in the city. It is a manageable size, an hour and a half, and rarely busy. The permanent collection is free.
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Place de la Bourse
Ange-Jacques Gabriel designed this open-sided square onto the river in the 1730s, breaking the medieval wall to do it, and its two matching palaces are the image the city sells. The mascaron heads above the windows are worth slowing down for. Facing it across the tram tracks is the water mirror.
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Pont de pierre
Napoleon ordered a crossing here for his Spanish campaign and the seventeen arches, matching the letters of his name, were finished in 1822 after the tidal current defeated several attempts. Cars are now banned from it. Walking across at dusk, with the quay lit behind, is the standard end to a first evening.
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Porte Cailhau
A gate of 1495 raised to mark a French victory in Italy, part defence and part triumphal arch, with conical roofs borrowed from a château. It stood at the river entrance to the medieval town. The stair inside climbs past a small display to a view over the Pont de pierre.
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Tour Pey-Berland
The bells stand apart from the cathedral here, in a tower of the fifteenth century, because the ground under the nave could not carry their weight. Two hundred and thirty steps of spiral stair reach a platform level with the roofs, which is the one place the flat street plan of the old town becomes legible.