Ruelle des Chats

Troyes


Off rue Champeaux (between Nos 30 and 32), a stroll along tiny ruelle des Chats (Alley of the Cats), as dark and narrow as it was four centuries ago – the upper floors almost touch – is like stepping back into the Middle Ages. The stones along the base of the walls were designed to give pedestrians a place to stand when horses clattered by. See if you can spot the namesake cat in the stonework.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Troyes attractions

1. 16th-Century Troyes

0.03 MILES

Half-timbered houses – some with lurching walls and floors that aren’t quite level – line many streets in the old city, rebuilt after a devastating fire…

2. Église Ste-Madeleine

0.07 MILES

Troyes’ oldest and most interesting neighbourhood church has an early Gothic nave and transept and a Renaissance-style choir and tower. The highlights…

3. Église St-Pantaléon

0.15 MILES

Faded with age and all the more enigmatic for it, this Renaissance-style, cruciform church, with its barrel-vaulted wood ceiling, is a great place to see…

4. WWII Memorial

0.16 MILES

This memorial pays homage to those who fought and died in WWII.

6. Hôtel de Vauluisant

0.18 MILES

This haunted-looking, Renaissance-style mansion shelters a twinset of unique museums. The Musée de l’Art Champenois is a repository for the evocative…

7. Basilique St-Urbain

0.22 MILES

Begun in 1262 by the Troyes-born Pope Urban IV, whose father’s shoemaker shop once stood on this spot, this church is exuberantly Gothic both inside and…

8. Monument aux Enfants de l'Aube

0.24 MILES

Erected in 1890, this flag-bedecked memorial, topped by a fleeing woman and child, pays tribute to those who died in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.