Nevers: Saint Bernadette, the Ducal Palace and the Blue of Nevers Faïence

Required Activities

• In the chapel at 34 rue Saint-Gildard, find the glass and bronze reliquary where Bernadette's body has lain since 1925, then go round the convent rooms and work out how a girl who came here at 22 and called herself an ordinary nun for thirteen years, until she died in 1879, was kept at arm's length from the pilgrimage she had started

• Go up the Clèves family's grand stair in the central turret of the Ducal Palace, find the aquarium of Loire fish and the room that explains why a Formula 1 circuit sits beside a faïence town, then walk the tree-lined esplanade out from the front to where it overlooks the Loire

• In the museum of faïence and fine arts, find a piece with the deep blue ground the Nevers makers called violet and we miscall Persian — the colour is in the body of the glaze, with Middle-Eastern flowers and birds painted on top — then find a blue-on-white Chinese-style piece from the Delft years after 1660, and work out which of the two was made for an aristocrat

• Walk the single street of Apremont-sur-Allier, a village of 66 people that held 587 in 1861, from the château and its listed stables up to the floral park, and look for how far above the lane the houses are built — the Allier has flooded the commune badly three times since 1982