Commercy: Stanislas's Château and the Legend of the Madeleine

Required Activities

• Stand in the middle of the horseshoe Place du Fer à Cheval and read Stanislas's forecourt off the stonework — the low outbuildings curving away on both sides, the deep-cut arcades Emmanuel Héré gave them, the balustraded terraces with their stone flame-pots above, and the four columns and triangular pediment marking the centre of the main block at the far end

• Buy a box of madeleines from a Commercy maker, turn one over before you eat it and find the ridges of the scallop shell it was moulded in — the shell is the shape the 1755 story turns on — then look for the hump on top that only a properly rested batter gives

• Walk down from the château terrace to the Meuse and work out what cut the garden off: the Marne–Rhine canal and the Paris–Strasbourg railway were driven straight through it in the mid-19th century. Find the scattered pieces of garden stonework still lying along the river bank, all that is left of the parterre, the grand canal and the burned water château

• Stand on the platform at Commercy station, where from the 1890s until the eve of the Second World War women with big wicker baskets crowded the carriage doors at every stop, each shouting the name of the bakery she sold for — a scene that happened nowhere else on the French network