The real charm of La Rochelle lies on the city's main shopping street, rue du Palais, leading up from the Vieux Port to place de Verdun. Lining the street are eighteenth-century houses, some grey stone, some half-timbered, with distinctive Rochelais-style slates overlapped like fish scales, while the shop fronts are set back beneath the ground-floor arcades. Among the finest are the Hôtel de la Bourse – actually the Chamber of Commerce – and the Palais de Justice with its colonnaded facade, both on the left-hand side. A few metres further on, in rue des Augustins, there is another grandiose affair built for a wealthy Rochelais in 1555, the so-called Maison Henri II, complete with loggia, gallery and slated turrets, where the regional tourist board has its offices. Place de Verdun itself is dull and characterless, with an uninspiring, humpbacked, eighteenth-century classical cathedral on the corner. Its only redeeming feature is the marvellously opulent Belle Époque Café de la Paix, all mirrors, gilt and plush, where La Rochelle's ladies of means come to sip lemon tea and nibble daintily at sticky cakes – and there is a tempting charcuterie and seafood shop next door.To the west of rue du Palais, especially in rue de l'Escale, paved with granite setts brought back from Canada as ballast in the Rochelais cargo vessels, you get the discreet residences of the eighteenth-century shipowners and chandlers, veiling their wealth with high walls and classical restraint. A rather less modest gentleman once installed himself on the corner of rue Fromentin: a seventeenth-century doctor who adorned his house front with the statues of famous medical men – Hippocrates, Galen and others. In rue St-Côme closer to the town walls is the Musée d'Orbigny-Bernon (Mon & Wed–Sat 10am–noon & 2–6pm, Sun 2–6pm; €3.20), with an extensive section on local history, important collections of local faïence, porcelain from China and Japan and some handsome furniture. East of rue du Palais, and starting out from place des Petits-Bancs, rue du Temple takes you up alongside the Hôtel de Ville, protected by a decorative but seriously fortified wall. It was begun around 1600 in the reign of Henri IV, whose initials, intertwined with those of Marie de Médici, are carved on the ground-floor gallery. It's a beautiful specimen of Frenchified Italian taste, adorned with niches and statues and coffered ceilings, all done in a stone the colour of ripe barley. And if you feel like quiet contemplation of these seemingly more gracious times, there's no better place for it than the terrace of the Café de la Poste, right next to the post office, in the small, traffic-free square outside. For more relaxed vernacular architecture nearly as ancient, carry on up rue des Merciers, the other main shopping area, to the cramped and noisy market square, close to which you'll find the Musée du Nouveau Monde (Mon & Wed–Sat 10.30am–12.30pm & 1.30–6pm, Sun 3–6pm; €3.20), whose entrance is in rue Fleuriau. Out of the ordinary, this museum occupies the former residence of the Fleuriau family, rich shipowners and traders who, like many of their fellow Rochelais, made fortunes out of the slave trade and Caribbean sugar, spices and coffee. There's a fine collection of prints, paintings and photos of the old West Indian plantations; seventeenth- and eighteenth-century maps of America; photogravures of Native Americans from around 1900, with incredible names like Piopio Maksmaks Wallawalla and Lawyer Nez Percé; and an interesting display of aquatint illustrations for Marmontel's novel Les Incas – an amazing mixture of sentimentality and coy salaciousness. Nearby in rue Gargoulleau is the Musée des Beaux-Arts (daily except Tues 2–5pm; €3.20), whose works are centred around a few Rochelais artists and illustrate the history of art from the primitives to the present day. To get back towards the port, from the maze of pedestrianized streets around the Hôtel de Ville, head down rue St-Sauveur, with its large gloomy church, across quai Maubec and quai Louis-Durand to rue St-Nicolas and adjoining place de la Fourche – with its huge shady tree and outdoor café – both pedestrianized and boasting several antiques dealers, second hand bookshops and a vintage clothes shop. The two streets share a Saturday flea/antiques market.
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