Bordeaux France - Attractions - Tours & day trips
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BordeauxBordeaux has been around since Roman times when it was capital of Aquitana Secunda, in around the 3rd century BC. Bordeaux has had two great financial booms in its time. The first was when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II of England in 1152, thus beginning a 300-year period of English rule and kick-starting the export wine trade (the English were very fond of the red wine they called claret).
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Map of Bordeaux
Bordeaux airport information - http://www.bordeaux.aeroport.fr/
Then in the 18th century colonial trade brought riches to Bordeaux and paid for the central architecture. The centre is attractive and quite small, so even if you are just stopping off here on the way somewhere else, you could easily discover Bordeaux's charms in a day. The 18th-century town stretches from the western banks of the River Garonne to the cathedral in the west and the place de la Comédie in the north. Any Roman remains are further north in the Jardin Public, but there is not much to speak of.
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The quartier St-Pierre is where you will find the elegant, 18th-century city with its fine mansions that are gradually being restored and done up. There are still a few streets that look rather grubby as they wait their turn to be spruced up along with the others. Imagine you were an 18th-century traveller and head to the neoclassical Grand Théatre on place de la Comédie, which was the centre of social life during Bordeaux's heyday, at the northern end of the semi-pedestrianized rue Ste-Catherine, which is the main shopping street. Victor Louis built the theatre in 1780 on the site of a Roman temple, which perhaps inspired him to put twelve Graces and Muses on top of the Corinthian colonnaded portico that surrounds it. Tickets for the operas and ballets start at only €7 (05 56 00 85 95), and this is really the best way to see the trompe l'oeil decorated interior. To see the impressive mansions with their wrought iron balconies look at place du Parlement and place St-Pierre to the south and southeast of place de la Comédie.
http://www.bordeaux-tourisme.com/ - Official tourism site for Bordeaux.
Place Gambetta is an important square off to the west along the cours de l'Intendence, itself lined with shops and cafés, as from here you can go off to various museums or find somewhere decent to eat. There are carved masks decorating the house fronts in place Gambetta and an English garden in the centre hides the spot where the guillotine did its work during the Revolution. South of the place Gambetta the Cathédrale St-André with its twin steeples, where Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII in 1137, is more attractive on the inside than from outside.
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