Ten minutes' walk upstream along the quayside from the château will bring you to a long flight of steps leading up to the Cathédrale St-Maurice . It's a dramatic approach, giving you the full benefit of the building's early medieval facade. Inside, the unusually wide, aisle-less nave with its dome-like Plantagenet vaulting is illuminated by twelfth-century stained glass. In the choir one window is dedicated to Thomas à Becket - it was made shortly after his death. The fifteenth-century rose windows in the transepts are particularly impressive, and there are modern examples of stained glass in the chapel of Notre-Dame de la Pitié, right of the entrance. The stone carving on the capitals and the supports for the gallery are beautiful, but the cathedral is overzealously furnished with a grandiose high altar and pulpit and a set of tapestries that can't compete with Angers' other woven treasures.

 

In front of the cathedral, on place Ste-Croix, is the town's favourite carpentry detail, the unlikely genitals of one of the carved characters on the medieval Maison d'Adam . The building is now used by craftspeople for presenting their wares (daily 9.30am-7pm). There's a small daily market on the square.

Heading north from place Ste-Croix, you pass place du Ralliement , hub of modern Angers, which has just undergone a face-lift, the most impressive result being the facade of the nineteenth-century Théâtre Municipal . From here, proceed into rue Lenepveu, where a Renaissance mansion (at no. 32) houses the Musée Pincé (mid-June to mid-Sept daily 9am-6.30pm; rest of year daily except Mon 10am-noon & 2-6pm; 10F/¬1.52). It's a mixed bag of antiquities, with collections from China and Japan, the latter by far the more interesting, with a reconstruction of a tearoom and a gallery full of delicate prints, including the famous wave engulfing a boat with Mount Fuji in the background by Hokusaï.

Apart from its cathedral, the other great Gothic edifice in Angers is the chancel of the Abbey of St Serge , now home to a high school, on avenue Mairie-Talet across boulevard Carnot, north of the centre near the congress centre. Though nothing much to look at from outside, the interior - notably the chapter room, cloister and refectory - has some of the most perfect vaulting rising from the slenderest of columns. Close by is the verdant and relaxing Jardin des Plantes (summer 7.30am-8pm; winter 8am-5.30pm; free).

Arguably the greatest stoneworks in Angers, however, are the creations of the famous local sculptor David d'Angers (1788-1856), whose statue of St Cecilia adorns the cathedral chancel; his best works, some original, some copies and casts, are exhibited in the stunning Galerie David d'Angers , built by glassing over the ruins of a thirteenth-century church, the Église Toussaint , 37bis rue Toussaint (mid-June to mid-Sept daily 9am-6.30pm; rest of year Tues-Sun 10am-noon & 2-6pm; 10F/¬1.52). David d'Angers was a prime activist in mid-nineteenth-century republican struggles in Paris and was close friends with many of the great Romantic artists and thinkers of the time, some of them featured here in busts or bronze medallions.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts next door, entered from 10 rue du Musée (closed for restoration until the end of 2002), is home to Boucher's Génie des Arts , Lorenzo Lippi's beautiful La Femme au Masque , the highly operatic Paolo et Francesca by Ingres and other representative works from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries.