Charleville-Mézières
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The place Ducale, in the centre of Charleville, was the result of the seventeenth-century local duke's envy of the contemporary place des Vosges in Paris. Despite the posh setting, the shops in the arcades remain very down-to-earth – poissonnières amongst them – and the cafés charge reasonable prices to sit outside: a very good position on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, when the market is held here.

From 31 place Ducale you can reach the complex of old and new buildings that house the Musée de l'Ardenne (Tues–Sun 10am–noon & 2–6pm; €3.50 combined ticket with Musée Arthur Rimbaud), which covers the different economic activities of the region over the ages through local paintings, prehistoric artefacts, legends, puppetry, weapons and coins. You need to keep up a good pace to get round all the rooms, but it's fun and informative.

The most famous person to emerge from the town was Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91), who ran away from Charleville four times before he was 17, so desperate was he to escape from its quiet provincialism. He is honoured in the Musée Arthur Rimbaud, housed in a very grand stone windmill – a contemporary of the place Ducale – on quai Arthur-Rimbaud, two blocks north of the main square (Tues–Sun 10am–noon & 2–6pm; €3.50 combined ticket with Musée de l'Ardenne). It contains a host of pictures of him and people he hung out with, including his lover Verlaine, as well as facsimiles of his writings and related documents. A few steps down the quayside is the spot where he composed his most famous poem, Le Bateau Ivre. After penning poetry in Paris, journeying to the Far East and trading in Ethiopia and Yemen, Rimbaud died in a Marseille hospital. His body was brought back to his home town – probably the last place he would have wanted to be buried – and true Rimbaud fanatics can visit his tomb in the cemetery west of the place Ducale at the end of avenue Charles Boutet.

Charleville is also a major international puppetry centre (its school is justly famous), and every three years it hosts one of the largest puppet festivals in the world, the Festival Mondial des Théâtres de Marionnettes (details can be found at www.marionnette.com). As many as 150 professional troupes – some from as far away as Mali and Burma – put on something like fifty shows a day on the streets and in every available space in town. Tickets are cheap, and there are shows for adults as well as the usual stuff aimed at kids. If you miss the festival you can still catch one of the puppet performances in the summer months every year (tel 03.24.33.72.50 for booking and information), or if you're passing by the Institut de la Marionnette between 10am and 9pm, you can see one of the automated episodes of the Four Sons of Aymon enacted on the facade's clock every hour, or all twelve scenes on Saturday at 9.15am.