The Berbie palace gardens over the Tarn

The Palais de la Berbie was the bishops' fortified residence from the thirteenth century and is now the Toulouse-Lautrec museum, but the part that matters to a photographer is free: the terrace garden along the river front, laid out as a formal French parterre of clipped box in scrolls and knots, with a covered walk on two sides and the Tarn twenty metres below.

Stand at the balustrade and the frame builds itself — box patterns in the foreground, the green river, the arches of the eleventh-century Pont-Vieux, and the tiled roofs of the Madeleine quarter on the far bank. Turn round and the cathedral's brick mass fills the sky behind the garden. Two completely different pictures, thirty seconds apart.

Morning gives even light on the parterre and a clean shot across the river; late afternoon backlights the walk and warms the brick. The box is green all year, so this works in February as well as June, which is not true of much else in Albi.

The garden keeps museum hours and closes with the museum, so an evening session has to happen from outside — the terrace is visible from the Pont-Vieux and from the far bank, which is the standard postcard view of the whole episcopal city.