Bordeaux hides a serious art city inside its 18th-century stone: a contemporary museum in a colonial goods warehouse, the neoclassical theatre Paris borrowed from, and a right-bank barracks covered in murals. Three days past the wine.
Start on the quays: the 1495 Porte Cailhau, a Gothic triumphal arch built for Charles VIII, faces the 17-arch Pont de Pierre ordered by Napoleon in 1810. Behind them runs 5km of UNESCO-listed 18th-century limestone facade.
Bordeaux's contemporary art museum fills the Entrepôt Lainé, an 1824 colonial-goods warehouse with 20m brick vaults. Rotating shows plus a 1,300-work collection running from Boltanski to Buren. Open 11:00-18:00, Wednesday to 20:00, closed Monday.
Founded in 1801 in two wings flanking the Palais Rohan garden: Titian, Veronese, Rubens, Delacroix's Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi, and a room for the Bordeaux school — Odilon Redon and Rosa Bonheur, both born here.
An 1870s military barracks on the right bank turned into a working street-art compound: legal graffiti walls across the old drill halls, a skatepark in the gymnasium, and the city's densest run of large-format murals along the ramparts.
Victor Louis's 1780 theatre: 12 Corinthian columns, a double-return staircase Garnier reused in Paris, and a blue-and-gold auditorium of 1,114 seats. Tours run on days without rehearsal and last about an hour.
Philippe Etchebest's brasserie occupies the Grand Théâtre's ground floor under 1780 painted ceilings and gilt mouldings. The three-course lunch menu runs about €39 and changes weekly; the terrace sits between the colonnade columns.
Two floors from the 25,000-year-old Venus of Laussel and Roman Burdigala mosaics to the permanent rooms on Bordeaux and the Atlantic slave trade, opened in 2009 — the first French museum to treat it head-on. Closed Monday.
The 1,400-seat shoebox hall opened in 2013 as home of the Orchestre National Bordeaux Aquitaine, with an adjustable canopy giving the region's cleanest acoustics. Symphonic programmes run most Thursday to Saturday evenings at 20:00.
The city's belly since 1749: around 60 stalls under a steel hall in Saint-Michel, with Arcachon oyster counters, Basque charcuterie and Landes poultry. Tuesday to Sunday from 06:00, closing 14:00 (15:00 Sunday).
The detached 114m Saint-Michel bell tower, finished in 1492, is the tallest in southern France. It stands over a square with a daily flea market and Portuguese, Algerian and Moroccan cafés — the most mixed corner of the city.
The Hôtel de Lalande of 1779 holds Bordeaux faience, miniatures and wrought iron; the adjoining former prison, kept raw, shows design — Starck, the Bouroullec brothers, Sottsass. Open 11:00-18:00, closed Tuesday.
Seven hundred metres through the old Irish and Dutch wine merchants' quarter, now some 40 antique dealers and restorers around the 1869 Halle des Chartrons. Stone cellars still run under the street towards the river.