Saint-Étienne

Mines, design and Le Corbusier over two days

Saint-Étienne repays a two-day stop. Spend the first on the Puits Couriot mining museum, the old streets around Place du Peuple and the Cité du Design in the former arms factory. Use the second for Le Corbusier's buildings at Firminy, a 10 to 15 minute TER ride, and the Pilat ridges or a match at Geoffroy-Guichard.

Design is the city's calling card today. Saint-Étienne founded its Biennale Internationale Design in 1998, a festival of about two weeks that is the largest of its kind in France, and UNESCO named it a City of Design in 2010. The Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain holds one of the largest modern and contemporary collections in the country. With about 173,000 residents in 2023, it ranks among the 15 largest communes in France.

Morning. Start at the Parc-Musée de la Mine at Puits Couriot, west of the centre. The pithead buildings, the lamp room and the headframe give you the backbone of the city's story before anything else does, and the guided visits explain how the coal seams shaped the valley.

Midday. Walk or take the tram to Place du Peuple. Look up at the Tour de la Droguerie, a fragment of the old ramparts, then wander Rue des Martyrs de Vingré with its old shopfronts and Rue Saint-Jean towards Place Boivin, where the Maison François Ier of 1547 shows a Gothic front with early Renaissance details. Have lunch near Place Jean Jaurès, under the cathedral and the prefecture.

Afternoon. Ride the tram north to the Manufacture and the Cité du Design, inside the former national arms factory. If modern art appeals more, carry on to the MAMC+ in Saint-Priest-en-Jarez, one of the larger modern collections in France outside Paris.

Second day. Take the TER to Firminy for Le Corbusier's Église Saint-Pierre and the Maison de la Culture, back by lunchtime. Spend the afternoon on the Pilat ridges if you have a car, or catch an evening match at Geoffroy-Guichard, where the noise explains the stadium's nickname.

Râpée, sarasson and Weiss chocolate from Saint-Étienne

Potatoes, cheese and pork carry most menus in Saint-Étienne, which cooks like the hill country around it. Order râpée, the crisp grated-potato cake, and sarasson, a fresh herb cheese. Fourme de Montbrison is the local blue, and Weiss has made chocolate in the city since the late 19th century. The best value is the weekday lunch menu around Place Jean Jaurès.

The Stéphanois table is mountain and working-class food, built on potatoes, cheese and pork. The dish to look for is râpée, grated potato fried into a crisp, flat cake, eaten on its own or with a green salad. Sarasson is a soft fresh cheese beaten with herbs, shallot and a dash of cream, served as a starter with bread or spooned over potatoes. In cold months, barboton, a slow stew of potatoes and bacon, turns up on the menus of old-fashioned bistros.

The Loire hills supply the cheese board: Fourme de Montbrison, a mild blue from the Forez to the north, is the one to order. Chocolate is a city tradition too. Weiss has made chocolate in Saint-Étienne since the late 19th century, and its shop is the obvious place for a box to take home.

For where to eat, the squares around Place Jean Jaurès and Place Chavanelle hold the traditional French restaurants, while Rue Saint-Jean and the streets off Place du Peuple have cheaper lunch spots, a vegetarian address or two and Asian places. The weekday lunch menu is where the value is; around the prefecture the tables fill with civil servants from noon. Many restaurants close on Sunday and some on Monday, so book or check ahead at the start of the week.