Things to see in Auxerre

Auxerre’s historic centre brings together medieval streets, major religious buildings and the riverside quarter beside the Yonne. The city is also associated with Burgundy’s wine heritage and football, but its surviving architecture gives the clearest route through its past. Almost the entire historic centre is designated as a protected sector because of this architectural inheritance. Half-timbered houses, cobbled squares and church towers define much of the old centre.

Cathedral and abbey

Construction of Cathédrale Saint-Étienne ran from the 13th to the 16th century. Its Gothic façade is notable for its asymmetry and varied ornament. The north tower rises above the city, while the stained glass forms another important part of the building. Together, the façade, tower and windows show the long period over which the cathedral took shape.

Abbaye Saint-Germain has origins around the year 800 and was once a Benedictine place of worship. The former monastic spaces include the cloister, dormitory and chapter house. Murals survive in the crypt, and part of the abbey houses an archaeological museum whose chronological scope runs from prehistory to the end of the Middle Ages.

The clock tower and medieval streets

At the heart of the old town, the 15th-century Tour de l’Horloge has been protected as a historic monument since 1862. Its clock uses two hands to indicate solar and lunar movement, marked by a sun and a moon at their tips. A 128-step climb leads to a viewpoint over Auxerre and the surrounding area.

Close by, Place Charles Surugue retains cobbles and well-preserved half-timbered houses. Its fountain carries a statue of Cadet Rousselle, an Auxerre bailiff of the 18th and 19th centuries remembered through the song that bears his name. The square gives a compact view of the domestic architecture that sits alongside the city’s larger monuments.

Below Abbaye Saint-Germain, the Quartier de la Marine recalls the boatmen, merchants and river carriers who once lived from work on the Yonne. Narrow, winding lanes lined with timber-framed houses descend towards the riverbank. The district links the abbey precinct with the water that shaped this part of Auxerre.

Museums and later architecture

Musée Leblanc-Duvernoy occupies an 18th-century private mansion and concentrates on ceramics and faience. A donation by Louis and Jeanne Pagès-Guenot added an important group of personalised faience. The museum also contains Beauvais tapestries installed in the music room by the former owner, Paul Leblanc-Duvernoy.

Chapelle des Visitandines represents a later architectural period. Built from 1714 as the chapel of the Visitation convent, it has restrained, classically ordered architecture in the Jesuit style, as well as a prominent dome. As an annexe of the Auxerre museum, it has displayed polychrome wooden sculptures by the 20th-century artist François Brochet.