The old town occupies a high steep-sided plateau overlooking a bend in the Charente, a natural fortress. It has many charms, if few notable sights. The labyrinthine streets to the north of the delightful place Louvel and the massive Hôtel de Ville have been largely restored and pedestrianized. It's here that the restaurants and bars are concentrated, while the eastern section, down rue Marango and rue St-Martial, has become the main commercial centre. On the southern edge of the plateau stands the Cathedral, whose west front – like Notre-Dame at Poitiers – is a fascinating display board for some expressive and lively twelfth-century sculpture, culminating in a Risen Christ with angels and clouds about his head, framed in the usual blaze of a halo. The lively frieze beneath the tympanum to the right of the west door commemorates the recapture of Spanish Zaragoza from the Moors, showing a bishop transfixing a Moorish giant with his lance and Roland killing the Moorish king.Next to the cathedral in the old bishop's palace, there's more art on show at the Musée des Beaux-Arts (Mon–Fri noon–6pm, Sat & Sun 2–6pm; €2.29, free entry Mon–Fri noon–2pm), with an emphasis on seventeenth- to nineteenth-century paintings, many by Charentais artists. From the front of the cathedral, you can walk all around the ramparts encircling the plateau, with long views over the surrounding country, now largely filled with urban sprawl. There are public gardens below the parapet at the far end of the fortifications, and a gravelly esplanade by the lycée where locals gather to play boules. Angoulême's most fascinating museum lies just below the city walls on the north side close to the River Charente: the Centre National de la Bande Dessinée, 121 rue de Bordeaux (Sept–June Tues–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat & Sun 2–6pm; July & Aug open Mon and until 7pm; €5; bus #3 or #5), devoted entirely to comic strips. Housed in a turn-of-the-twentieth-century brewery, with contemporary high-rise and glass additions, the museum gets across the message that comics ("BD") – from politics to pornography – are regarded as a serious art form in France. The museum owns a collection of some four thousand original drawings, which it displays in rotating exhibitions of about three hundred at a time. They range from the earliest stories with pictures and captions, the nineteenth-century images d'Épinal, through the introduction of the speech bubble in the 1920s to some of the darker contemporary productions. Astérix, Peanuts, Tintin and many other characters and artists are represented. There's also a vast library, much of it in English, where you're welcome to relax on cushions and flick through the comics. Another riverfront museum close by is the Atelier-Musée du Papier, 134 rue de Bordeaux (July & Aug Tues–Sat noon–6.30pm; Sept–June Tues–Sun 2–6pm; free), located in a disused cigarette-paper factory – a fitting tribute to the declining Charentais paper industry. While exhibits get into the history and technicalities of paper making, art isn't forgotten, with contemporary creations on show, utilizing paper, cardboard and pulp.
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