www.besancon-tourisme.com. An important town since Roman times, one-time centre of the watch-making industry, and capital of Franche-Comté, Besan√笵con lies in a river valley fringed by hills on the edge of the Jura. The pleasant old town centre, la Boucle, lies in a loop of the Doubs overlooked by yet another Vauban citadel.

At the northern edge of the old town, facing place de la Révolution, the excellent Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie (www.mbaa.besancon/fr) runs the gamut from Egyptology to Picasso. The main street, Grande Rue, bisects the old town along the path of the original Roman road, and crosses central place du Huit-Septembre. This cobbled square is flanked by a baroque church, and the 16thC Hôtel de Ville faced in broad bands of yellow and grey stone. Just behind it is the ornate and slightly older Palais de Justice. Further down Grande Rue, the new Musée du Temps (www.mdt.besancon.fr) is amassing its collections of antique and gloriously decorative timepieces in the Palais Granvelle, a Renaissance mansion with a fine arcaded courtyard built by one of Besan√笵con’s leading families. The writer Victor Hugo was born nearby, as were cinematography pioneers, the Lumière brothers.

At the top of the street, beyond a little square littered with a handful of Roman remains, the Porte Noire, a triumphal arch dating from the 2ndC AD leads to the Cathédrale de Saint-Jean, from which it is a steep 15-minute hike up to the Citadelle and its four well-worth-the-climb museums (all closed Tues).

The Musée Agricole illustrates traditional farming methods. Regional crafts are displayed in the Musée Comtois. The Musée de la Résistance et de la Déportation takes an unsentimental and laudably unsensational look at the Nazi occupation; and the favourite with children is the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle complete with aquarium, an insectarium and a zoo park. Besancon makes a useful base for exploring the Doubs and the Jura [insert link].