Grosse Cloche

This guide to the Grosse Cloche in Bordeaux opens with a teenager dragged through this very gate for breaking curfew, into a jail the medieval city kept beneath its belfry behind ten-centimetre oak doors. You'll hear why Bordelais nicknamed the place the Hotel du Lion d'Or after the gilded English leopard weathervane still turning above it, a leftover from the centuries Bordeaux answered to England rather than France. The guide also follows Armande-Louise, the bell recast in 1775 after earlier bells cracked from constant ringing, and what she has been rung for over the centuries.