Dinan: The Ramparts, the Rue du Jerzual and the Heart of Du Guesclin

Required Activities

• Walk the 2,600 m of rampart walk round the old town and name the nine towers as you pass them — Beaumanoir, Vaucouleurs, Saint-Julien, Beaufort, du Connétable, de Coëtquen, Penthièvre, Longue and Sainte-Catherine — and find all five gates, including the Porte Saint-Louis cut through in 1620

• Climb the Tour de l'Horloge to its circular platform for the view over the roofs, and on the way find the Duchesse Anne, the hour bell recast in 1905 from the metal of the 1507 bell that Anne of Brittany stood godmother to, in the third belfry any Breton town was granted after Rennes and Fougères

• In the right transept of Saint-Sauveur, find the tomb of Du Guesclin's heart — a 14th-century engraved slab set inside the heavier gilded granite tomb built round it in the 18th century — the box holding the remains of his first wife Tiphaine Raguenel beside it, and the three recumbent effigies of Rolland de Dinan, Guillaume de Lesquen and Berthelot d'Angoulevent

• Walk the rue du Jerzual from the gate in the wall all the way down the 75 m to the port on the Rance, the river route that carried Dinan's cloth and goods to Saint-Malo, counting the half-timbered houses on the cobbles

• At the castle, go into the Tour Coëtquen, built for artillery, where seven recumbent effigies stood until the damp drove them out to Saint-Sauveur and Saint-Malo, and find the motte that the Normans of Duke William besieged in 1064 — the assault that appears on the Bayeux Tapestry