Rennes: The Parliament of Brittany, the Lices Market and the Portes Mordelaises

Required Activities

• On the booked tour of the palace, find the sundial set in the tympanum above the main door on the place du Parlement-de-Bretagne, then inside pick out the painted ceilings of the rooms rebuilt to the original after the 1994 fire

• At the Saturday market, buy a galette-saucisse from the stalls between the two halls on the place de la Trinité, then work out the layout by trade — butchers in the west hall, producers in the east, fishmongers on the car-park deck, florists on the place Saint-Michel

• At the Porte Mordelaise, find the arms carved above the carriage gate — two lions either side of a lance, the banner of the Montfort dukes of Brittany — and the Roman block dedicated to the emperor Gordian III that was reused in the gate with its inscription set upside down

• In the Parc du Thabor, stand in the formal garden Denis Bühler laid out — the only garden à la française he ever made — then walk down into the hollow called l'Enfer, dug after the 1720 fire for a reservoir that was never built, used for duels in the nineteenth century and for German executions of Resistance members in 1944

• Compare the two market halls with the bandstand, aviary, orangery and glasshouses in the Thabor: all of them were built to the drawings of the same city architect, Jean-Baptiste Martenot