Laon: The Crowned Hill and the Oxen of Notre-Dame

Required Activities

• Stand back from the west front and count the stone oxen on the upper half-storeys of the two towers — there are sixteen, one at each corner — and use them, carved life-size, to judge how big the towers above you really are

• Inside, walk to the crossing and look straight up into the lantern tower, counting the eight windows, two to a face, that light the church from above, then carry on to the east end and see that it finishes flat, like an English cathedral, rather than in the ring of chapels every other great French Gothic church has

• Walk the ramparts of the upper town, still standing almost unbroken on their mid-14th-century line, and work out from the wall-top why the town was built up here — then go down to the foot of the wall and find one of the springs that come out of the clay under the hill, channelled into fountains and cattle troughs since the Middle Ages

• Laon's protected old town covers 370 hectares, the largest safeguarded sector in France — cross it on foot to 2 place Aubry, just north of the cathedral, and find the small 12th-century chapel of the Templars standing in its garden