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A pleasant and prosperous industrial centre, ST-QUENTIN is a convenient place to pause on the way south, but makes no great demands on your time. Thanks to the town's Communist mayor, the central place de l'Hotel de Ville is now completely closed to traffic. The north side of it is dominated by a particularly good-looking, arcaded, late-Gothic Hotel de Ville , whose bells ring protracted, syncopated changes every quarter-hour. To the east, rue St-Andre leads to the town's skyscrapingly massive but outwardly rather uninspiring Gothic Basilique . Inside, its main virtue is its sheer size. In fact, it's a miracle that it is still standing at all, since the retreating Germans mined all 300 pillars in 1918 and were only prevented from setting the explosives off by lack of time - you can still see the marks left by the mines. Another curiosity is the maze in the paving of the nave, designed for penitents to figure out on their knees. Of much greater interest is the Musee Antoine-Lecuyer on rue Lecuyer, at the end of rue Raspail (Mon & Wed-Fri 10am-noon & 2-5pm, Sat 10am-noon & 2-6pm, Sun 2-6pm; closed Tues & public hols; 15F/?2.29, Wed free), which contains a big collection of pastel portraits of the leading politicians, nobles, artists and socialites of eighteenth-century France by locally born Maurice-Quentin de Latour. The town's other interesting collection, said to be one of the largest in the world, is that of more than half a million butterflies and other insects, housed in the Musee d'Entomologie , at 14 rue de la Sellerie, just off the main square (Mon & Wed-Sat 2-6pm, Sun 3-6pm; 15F/?2.29). To get to the centre of town from the gare SNCF , follow rue General-Leclerc over the Somme, and up rue d'Isle. The tourist office is at 27 rue V. Basch, just off the main square (Mon-Fri 8am-noon & 1.30-6pm, Sat 9am-noon & 1.30-6pm, Sun 11am-12.30pm & 3-5.30pm; Nov-March closed Sun morning; tel 03.23.67.05.00, fax 03.23.67.78.71). For accommodation , try the basic Hotel du Depart , place du Monument-aux-Morts (tel 03.23.62.31.69; under 160F/?24), just to the right as you come out of the station, or one of two clean, decent hotels off the main square in the centre of town: Le Florence , 42 rue Zola (tel 03.23.64.22.22, fax 03.23.62.52.85; under 160F/?24), which has a restaurant (from 95F/?14.48; closed Mon lunch & Sun), and the Hotel de la Paix et Albert I , 3 place du 8-Octobre (tel 03.23.62.77.62; 160-220F/?24-34), on the road between the train station and the town centre. The town's campsite and hostel are on boulevard Jean-Bouin (both tel 03.23.62.68.66; closed Dec-Feb), 2km from the station by the river - take any bus to the basilique then bus #4 to the piscine municipale , the hostel is next door.
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