Place de la Liberté and the Rue des Consuls

Sarlat's old town was restored as a single block in the 1960s, and the result is a medieval centre with almost no modern intrusion in it — around sixty listed buildings inside a few hundred metres, all in the same warm ochre limestone, all roofed in heavy grey lauze slabs. The Place de la Liberté is the hinge: the town hall on one side, the old church of Sainte-Marie converted into a market hall with vast steel doors on the other, and lanes running off it in every direction.

The Rue des Consuls is the best of those lanes — a run of merchants' houses with mullioned windows and carved doorways, narrow enough that a couple walking away fills the frame. Behind the cathedral, the Rue Montaigne and the passage past the Maison de La Boétie give the same stone with turrets and external staircases.

Go early. First light comes over the roofs and turns the limestone honey-coloured, and before eight the lanes are yours. The Saturday market fills the main square with people and awnings from about eight in the morning — worth avoiding or worth using, but not a surprise you want on the day.

Evenings work differently: the town lights its facades and the lanes go warm and empty again after the restaurants seat. Midday in July and August is the worst of both, crowded and flat.