Coucy: The Great Keep the German Army Blew Up in 1917

Required Activities

• Cross the medieval town and go into the castle through the porte de maître Odon, then work across the three enceintes of this 14-hectare stronghold to find the well sunk 64.50 m into the spur and the kitchens Louis of Orléans had built from 1402 against the bailey curtain, dug out again by archaeologists

• At the end of the spur, pace out the ring of the fallen keep — 31.25 m across, its wall 3.45 m thick at the base, and 54 m high, twenty metres taller than the keep of the Louvre — and in the compact heap of its stone find the great iron bars that Viollet-le-Duc banded round the tower in the 1850s to make it safe for visitors

• Go into the walled town through the Porte de Laon, listed since 1889 and still standing although smaller charges were set in it in 1917, and find the low artillery boulevard thrown up in front of it in the 16th century; then follow the ramparts round to the Porte de Chauny and the Porte de Soissons

• Stand in the salle des Preux, 60 m long by 15 m wide, and work out how many of its nine champions you can still make out — David, Judas Maccabeus, Joshua, Caesar, Alexander, Hector, Charlemagne, King Arthur and Godfrey of Bouillon — then find the salle des Preuses beside it

• Find the entrance to the Domaine de la Grangère beside the war memorial — the old garden of the governor's house, where Gabrielle d'Estrées gave birth in 1594 to César, duc de Vendôme, Henri IV's bastard son