Brive la Gaillarde

Brive La Gaillarde, a major rail junction and industrial centre for miles around, is a base for exploring the Corrèze département and its beautiful villages, as well as the upper reaches of the Vézère and Dordogne rivers. Sights include the church of St-Martin, originally Romanesque in style. Numerous streets fan out from the surrounding square, place du Général-de-Gaulle, with a number of turreted and towered houses, some dating back to the thirteenth century. The most impressive is the sixteenth-century Hôtel de Labenche on boulevard Jules-Ferry, now housing the town's archeological finds as well as a collection of seventeenth-century tapestries. There's also the Centre National d'Etude Edmond Michelet, based in the former house of this minister of de Gaulle, and one of the town's leading résistants, with exhibitions portraying the occupation and Resistance through photographs, posters and objects of the time.