The City
St Joan turns up all over town. In pride of place in the large, central place du Martroi , at the end of rue de la Republique, rises a bulky mid-nineteenth-century likeness of her on horseback, with a series of copper-green friezes around the base, depicting scenes from her action-filled life. To the east, the Cathedrale Ste-Croix (daily 9am-noon & 2-6pm), battered for the best part of 600 years by various wars, is full of Joan of Arc, who celebrated her victory over the English here. In the north transept, her pedestal is supported by two jagged and golden leopards, representing the English, on an altar carved with the battle scene. In the nave, the late-nineteenth-century stained-glass windows tell the story of her life, starting from the north transept, with caricatures of the loutish English and snooty French nobles. Across place d'Etape from the cathedral, outside the red-brick Renaissance Hotel de Ville , Joan appears again, in pensive mood, her skirt now shredded by twentieth-century bullets. You are spared the Maid in the Musee des Beaux-Arts , opposite the Hotel de Ville (Tues & Sun 11am-6pm, Wed 10am-10pm, Thurs-Sat 10am-6pm; 20F/?3.05), where the main collections are of fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Italian, Dutch and Flemish works on the second floor, and eighteenth-century French portraits on the first floor. If you'd rather escape to more recent times, head down to the modern art collection in the basement, which houses canvases by Picasso, Miro, Braque, Dufy, Renoir and Monet, as well as Auguste Rodin's studies of Gauguin, and photographs of Picasso by Man Ray. The museum regularly stages good temporary exhibitions; the tourist office has details. If you follow rue Jeanne-d'Arc east from the cathedral and turn left down rue Charles-Sanglier, you'll find the ornate sixteenth-century Hotel Cabu (daily: April-Sept 10am-noon & 2-6pm; rest of year 10am-noon & 2-5pm; 15F/?2.29, free Wed & Sun morning), a historical and archeological museum containing a collection of rather beautiful bronze animals from the Gallo-Roman period, along with medieval ivories and more Joan of Arc mementos. The entrance is on square Abbe-Desnoyers. At the end of rue Jeanne-d'Arc, on place General-de-Gaulle, is the semi-timbered Maison de Jeanne d'Arc (Tues-Sun: May-Oct 10am-noon & 2-6pm; Nov-April 2-6pm; 13F/?1.98), a 1960s reconstruction of the house where Joan stayed. Its contents are fun, most of all for children, with good models and displays of the breaking of the Orleans siege. Despite the consistency in artists' renderings of the saint, it seems the pageboy haircut and demure little face are part of the myth - there is no contemporary portrait of her, save for a clerk's doodle in the margin of her trial proceedings , kept in the Paris archives. The Centre Charles Peguy , 11 rue Tabour (Mon-Fri 2-6pm; free), down the road from Joan's house in a Renaissance mansion, is also worth a visit. It takes its themes from the life and work of Charles Peguy (1873-1914), a Christian Socialist writer from Orleans, a great humanitarian and supporter of Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who was convicted of treason in 1894 on forged evidence. Though there are cartoons and drawings, the main exhibits are texts, so it helps if you can read French. Among various books and pamphlets, there's Zola's front-page J'accuse letter to the president, explanations by both sides in the Dreyfus affair and documentation of the 1907 general strike call for the forty-hour week (which only became effective in 1936). If you head back east, and down towards the river, you'll find the scattered vestiges of the old city. Rue de Bourgogne was the Gallo-Roman main street, and, in the basement of the modern Prefecture at no. 9, a spartan civic reception room provides odd surroundings for an excavated first-century dwelling - or bits of it - and the walls of a ninth-century church. It's not a site as such: ask the receptionist if you can have a look. Across the street is the facade of the Salles des Theses , all that remains of the medieval university of Orleans where the Reformation theologian Calvin studied law. Between the Prefecture and the river, the narrow streets of the old industrial area surround the former Dessaux vinegar works , a turn-of-the-twentieth-century establishment whose buildings encircle the house Isabelle Romee moved to a few years after her daughter Joan was burnt at the stake in Rouen. Down the rue de Bourgogne, a plaque marks the house of Joan's brother and companion-in-arms on the corner of rue des Africains and rue de la Folie. At least two of the quarter's churches are on the list of precious monuments: the remains of St-Aignan and its well-preserved eleventh-century crypt; and the Romanesque St-Pierre-le-Puellier , an old university church now used for concerts and exhibitions. St-Aignan was destroyed during the English siege, rebuilt by the Dauphin and extended into one of the greatest churches in France by Louis XII, but during the Wars of Religion, more sieges of the city took their toll on the church, leaving just the choir and transepts standing. Visits to the crypt need to be arranged through the tourist office. North of the city centre, next to the gare routiere , is the Museum de Sciences Naturelles , at 2 rue Marcel-Proust (daily 2-6pm; 21F/?3.20), a small, but well-organized and educational museum, with a large rooftop tropical greenhouse. A short distance to the east is the Parc Pasteur , a pleasant and relaxing spot for a picnic.
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