Summer 2024

Christina Mackenzie explores the treasures of Troyes in Champagne…
Spotlight
on:
TROYES
The Champagne
cork-shaped town
has oodles of charm
When it comes to visitor attractions, Troyes
(pronounced trwa), in the Aube department
east of Paris, really has something for
everyone. Gothic churches and museums
galore, the greatest collection of halftimbered
houses in the country, 45% of the
planet’s stained-glass, a dynamic city centre,
the largest factory outlet in Europe, and three
huge lakes within less than an hour’s drive.
So clearly, not a town to visit in one day. But
you certainly pack a number of its highlights
into a long weekend, perhaps visiting a couple
of religious edifices and one museum per
day, otherwise you may suffer an indigestion
of religious art. You could equally overdose
on local favourite “andouillette” chitterling
sausage) and Champagne, because Aube
is second only to its northern neighbour, the
Marne, for the quantities of bubbly produced!
Troyes’ greatest enemy has been fire. The
Vikings burnt it down in 888, the cathedral
was reduced to ashes in July 1188 and in May
1209 large sections of the town went up in
flames. But it was a catastrophic two-day fire
in May 1524 that destroyed about a quarter
of the city, mostly in the affluent merchants’
neighbourhood. Those with money rebuilt in
stone, others simply replicated the medieval
design of their previous home.
So although the colourful, half-timbered
houses, all leaning hither and thither in the city
centre look medieval, they are largely post
1524 Renaissance.
Troyes was left almost unscathed by WWII
but had become, to quote from tourist office
documents “an unattractive city with a
serious image problem… a genuine cesspool”!
So the most destitute neighbourhoods were
pulled down with the loss of the city’s oldest
timber-framed houses. But fortunately, in the
late 1950s concerned inhabitants founded
an association whose volunteers over the
past 70 years have convinced successive
local governments to restore the city to its
former glory.
Stained glass windows - Sainte Madeleine © D. Le Névé,
Troyes la Champagne Tourisme
And glorious it is! The city centre is referred to
locally as “Le Bouchon” (the cork) because,
although it pre-dates the invention of
Champagne by more than a thousand years,
it is shaped like a Champagne cork lying
96 | The Good Life France Figeac © Lot Tourisme, Teddy Verneuil
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