Auch: The 1,500 Carved Motifs of Sainte-Marie, the Monumental Stair and d'Artagnan

Required Activities

• In the cathedral, find the Resurrection window — the last of Arnaud de Moles's eighteen, with the date 25 June 1513 and the master glazier's own signature in its cartouche — then go into the choir stalls and count the four carved figures on a single buttress between two high backs, which is how the 1,500 motifs add up

• Walk the 374 steps of the monumental stair down the 35 m to the Gers, counting the six flights and stopping on all three terrace landings, and find on the second one Jaume Plensa's cast-iron Observatoire du temps, set there in 1992 to mark how high the flood of 8 July 1977 came up into the lower town

• Find the 14th-century tower beside the cathedral that everyone calls the Tour d'Armagnac and work out why the name is wrong: it was built as the archbishops' prison, became the store for the church archives when the cells stood empty, and held prisoners again in the 19th century

• Climb back to the high town by a pousterle instead of the stair — the stepped lanes that run up to the medieval gates, whose Gascon name comes from posterula, a postern or hidden path — and see which gate yours brings you out at

• Stand under the two west towers and work out which one holds the bourdon: the great bell dedicated to the Virgin, 2.18 m across, hangs alone in the clock tower on the right while the other eight are in the north tower, and its note is among the ten deepest in France, lower than the bourdon of Notre-Dame de Paris