Guingamp: The Basilica of Bon-Secours, the Castle of Pierre II and the Fontaine de la Plomée

Required Activities

• Stand at the west front and work out where the south-west tower came down on 29 November 1535, taking the west portal and part of the nave with it, then look over the polished granite Renaissance tower Jean Le Moal designed to replace it — its two moulded storeys, the colonnettes of the balcony, and the water spouts cut as cannons pointing in every direction from the platform

• Find the tour Pointue in the middle of the basilica, 57 m up to an octagonal granite spire with a cock on a wrought-iron cross three metres tall and four pinnacles around it — and remember that an American shell took its top off on 7 August 1944, fired at maquisards in the belfry who had been mistaken for Germans

• Inside, find the Black Virgin and Child that Pius IX granted the honours of coronation on 16 May 1857, crowned before an immense crowd that 8 September, then go out to the Sainte-Jeanne portal and sit on the wide stone bench projecting from its jambs — the banc des pauvres et des pèlerins — under its four cannon-shaped gargoyles

• At the castle, find the four great round towers of the mid-15th-century square plan, built for artillery and never finished because duke François II had to spend his money on Dinan, Fougères and Nantes instead — then look for the two castles underneath it that Laurent Beuchet's excavations found: the motte of about 1030 with its 5 m ditch cut into the rock and a timber gate tower on six posts, and the polygonal stone enceinte of the 12th century

• Find the Fontaine de la Plomée, protected since 1902, then the house dated 1416 that is the oldest in the Côtes-d'Armor, the surviving stretches of 15th-century rampart, and the Pennsylvanian-plan prison of the 18th century on the way back