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For all its slightly unreal perfection, Dinan is not excessively overrun with tourists. There are no very vital museums; the monument is the town itself, and time is best spent wandering from crêperie to café, admiring overhanging houses along the way. Unfortunately, you can only walk along one small stretch of the ramparts , from the Jardin Anglais behind St Sauveur church to a point just short of Tour Sillon overlooking the river. You can get a good general overview from the Tour de l'Horloge , dating from the end of the fifteenth century (daily: April & May 2-6pm; June-Sept 10am-7pm; 16F/¬2.44, or Les Clefs pour Dinan ticket).

As you might guess from its blending of two separate towers, the fourteenth-century keep that once protected the town's southern approach was built by Estienne Le Tour, architect of St-Malo's Tour Solidor . It's now known as the Château de Duchesse Anne , and houses a small local history museum in the ancient Tour Coëtquen (June to mid-Oct daily 10am-6.30pm; rest of year daily except Tues 1.30-5.30pm; 22F/¬3.35, or Les Clefs pour Dinan ticket). On the lower floor, a group of stone fifteenth-century notables looks for all the world like a medieval time capsule, about to de-petrify at any moment.

St Sauveur church , very much the town's focus, is a real mixture of ages, with a Romanesque porch and an eighteenth-century steeple. Even its nine Gothic chapels feature five different patterns of vaulting in no symmetrical order, and the most complex pair, in the centre, would make any spider proud. A cenotaph contains the heart of Bertrand du Guesclin, the fourteenth-century Breton warrior (and later Constable of France), who fought and won a single combat with the English knight Thomas of Canterbury, in what is now place du Guesclin, to settle the outcome of the siege of Dinan in 1364. Relics of his life and battles are scattered all over Brittany and Normandy; in death, he spread himself between four separate burial places for four different parts of his body (the French kings restricted themselves to three burial sites). North of the church, rue du Jerzual leads down to the gate of the same name and on down (as rue du Petit-Fort) to the lovely port du Dinan . Here the river is sufficiently narrow to be spanned by a small but majestic old stone bridge, and artisans' shops and restaurants line the quay.

At some point during each summer (the date tends to vary; check with the tourist office) the Fête des Remparts is celebrated with medieval-style jousting, banquets, fairs and processions, culminating in an immense fireworks display. There's a market every Thursday in the places du Champ and du Guesclin (the original medieval fairground).