Fotografi a Albi e Cordes-sur-Ciel

Albi is built from one material and it shows in every frame: the Tarn clay under the town became the brick that the whole episcopal city is made of, so the cathedral, the palace, the bridge and the houses all sit in the same warm red. Sainte-Cécile is the set piece — a fortress from the outside, a single block with no flying buttresses and a bell tower like a keep, and inside a vault painted end to end in Renaissance blue and gold by Bolognese artists, plus a fifteenth-century Last Judgement across the west wall. It is an active cathedral, free to enter, with a ticketed choir; photography rules and service times are set by the parish and worth checking a few days ahead. Next door the Palais de la Berbie, once the bishop's fortified residence and now the Toulouse-Lautrec museum, holds a formal French garden of clipped box parterres on its terrace, and from that terrace the town, the river and the eleventh-century Pont-Vieux line up in one shot. The other side of that view — cathedral, palace and old brick bridge stacked above the water — is taken from the far bank, best in late afternoon when the sun comes round onto the west front. Twenty-five minutes northwest, Cordes-sur-Ciel is the second half of the day: a bastide of 1222 on a steep cone of a hill, four rings of gates, Gothic merchant houses with carved facades, and a single climbing street that turns into a staircase. It is small enough to work in an hour and steep enough to be worth flat shoes. Best light: April to June and September to October; the brick goes flat under a white summer sky and glorious an hour before sunset.