The capital of Upper-Normandy, Rouen like Paris, sits on the Seine, an hour from the capital. The city of the Impressionists, Rouen has inspired countless artists over the centuries. The places is filled with a sensory overload, it is the city where Joan of Arc is ever-present... Malckeon came across a famous mansion (name pronounced "boor-trood) is a bank (open during banking hours) built at the time of Law Courts (early 16C in Renaissance style). Seeing the inner courtyard is why you would visit. In it you will see elaborate gables and roofline with an octagonal tower. Along one side is a carved frieze with historical illustrations. The outer face is also worth looking at with basket-handled arch doorways like the window arches. "Everything changes, even stone." Claude Monet wrote these words in a letter and vividly demonstrated them in paint, conveying a wondrous combination of permanence and mutability as the sun daily transformed the facade of Rouen Cathedral. Extending the building's encrusted stone surface to the richly varied impasto surface of his painting, he portrayed the cathedral perpetually re-emerging in the suffused light of early morning. Town with a Thousand Spires and it is not Prague
The St-Maclou quarter or antiques area - All around St Maclou church you will find antique shops - so many that is the second highest concentration of antique dealers per square metre in France!! Here all aspects of the antique and antiquarian trade are represented: pottery, picture framing, restoration work, book binding etc. It is fitting that these ancient crafts should be housed in this one of the oldest surviving parts of Rouen under the gothic splendour of St Maclou ...