Limoges: Porcelain at the Musée Adrien Dubouché, the Bénédictins Station and the Cathedral's Rood Screen

Required Activities

• In the Musée national Adrien-Dubouché, start on the mezzanine des techniques and follow the four stages of making a piece of porcelain from paste to glaze on the old machines, then work the chronological route up through the eighteen thousand pieces to the Limoges rooms — and find out why a museum founded in 1845 by Berthe Morisot's father is named after a draper's son who bought a 587-piece collection for the town in 1875

• Stand in the Champ de Juillet gardens below the Bénédictins station and work out the 67 m campanile against the copper dome beside it — the dome that caught fire during maintenance in February 1998 and had to have its copper plates torn off before the fire could be reached — then find the clock stage where a clandestine transmitter is said to have been hidden under the occupation, and where the railwaymen ran up a red flag on 20 May 1968

• Walk to the west end of the cathedral, under the organ, and find Jean de Langeac's rood screen — cut in 1533–1534 with Jean Arnaud's figures added in 1536, moved off the choir in 1789 and brought here in 1888 — then notice that it and the fragments of the older screen are the only limestone in the building, brought in from Poitou, while everything round it is granite

• Go round to the Portail Saint-Jean on the north side of the cathedral, built between 1516 and 1530, and read the two original Renaissance door leaves: Saint Valérie carrying her own severed head to Bishop Martial on the left, the stoning of Stephen on the right