48 Hours In ... Perpignan

WHY GO NOW?

WHY GO NOW?

Because you like the idea of experiencing two cultures for the price of one. Perpignan - the capital of the Roussillon region, in France's south-easternmost corner - is French, but only just. The border with Spain lies a mere 20km away and there's a marked Catalan flavour to the place. Road signs and street names are displayed in both languages; cafés, too, are as likely to be serving food drenched in sofregit (a Catalan sauce) as they are to be toasting croque-monsieurs. Sun-seekers will be attracted by the steamy August and respectable September temperatures, but the city's compact old town offers plenty of diversions of its own: smart shops and cafés, a maze of elegantly dilapidated streets and squares, and the vast Palais des Rois de Majorque, which dominates the south of the city.

BEAM DOWN

Ryanair (0871 246 0000; www.ryanair.com) is the only carrier to run flights direct from the UK to Perpignan, with departures twice daily from London Stansted. Expect to pay about £100 return per person. A shuttlebus service meets each incoming flight at the tiny airport and deposits passengers at the train station; the 15-minute trip costs €4.50/£3 per person each way.

GET YOUR BEARINGS

A ring-road of wide boulevards encircles central Perpignan, but you can easily fill your itinerary without going much beyond the limits defined by the Basse river to the north, the walls of the Palais des Rois de Majorque to the south, the bustling Place Arago to the west and, in the east, the shady gardens of the Palais des Congrès. It's in the Palais des Congrès that you'll find the tourist office (00 33 4 68 66 30 30; www.perpignantourisme.com; open Mon-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 10am-5pm). The old town itself gets progressively more residential and crumbling the further you travel from the busy streets round Place Arago and rue de l'Ange. The river Têt bypasses the city centre to the north.

CHECK IN

There are plenty of budget hotels to choose from. For location, try the Hôtel de la Loge (00 33 4 68 34 41 02; www.hoteldelaloge.fr) at 1 rue Fabriques-Nabot, a pleasant building on a quiet street in the old town. A double room costs from €46/£32 per night, plus €5.50 per person for breakfast. Alternatively, the three-star Hôtel de France (00 33 4 68 34 92 81) at 16 Quai Sadi Carnot has rooms with views of the Basse. Doubles start at €45/£32, plus €6 per person for breakfast. Rather more plush is the Hôtel Mercure (00 33 4 68 35 67 66; www.altranet.fr/mercure) at 5 bis cours Palmarole, near the tourist office, where double rooms cost €82/£58 per night, plus €10 per person for breakfast, and family suites are €115/£81 per night.

TAKE A HIKE

At Place de la Victoire, the curving walls of Le Castillet are all that remain of this part of the old city ramparts. The tower has now been redeveloped as a regional museum (open daily except Tuesday, 9.30am-6pm; admission €4) and a scale-model inside the portal shows how the city looked in 1686. From the south-east corner of the square, make your way eastwards to the grand façade and brick bell-tower of the 14th-century Cathédrale Saint Jean (open daily 7.30am-noon, 5-7pm, entrance free), then walk back past the street cafés of Place Gambetta to the Place de la Loge, where three ornate 14th-century buildings - the Palais de la Deputation (a parliament building), the Hôtel de Ville (the town hall) and the Loge de Mer (the stock exchange) - loom above the shops and sightseers.

THE ICING ON THE CAKE

In predictably surreal fashion, Salvador Dali had this to say of Perpignan's train station when he visited the town in 1965: "It all became clear in a flash - there, right in front of me, was the centre of the world." The station's psychedelic ceiling is certainly groovy, although the Dali-inspired sculpture outside (a man floating under half a train carriage) arguably takes things just a little too far.

WRITE A POSTCARD

Impress the folks back home with your in-depth knowledge of Perpignan's past, as gleaned from the brown "histoire de la cité" boards that stand next to every church, monument and historic site in the old town. And while you're at it, you can pose as a polyglot: the information is given in French, Catalan and English.

LUNCH ON THE RUN

Round your stroll off with lunch at Le France (00 33 4 68 51 61 71), a stylish restaurant serving traditional French cuisine, which has been converted from the ground floor of the ornate stock exchange building. The €12.50/£9 menu runs from noon-2pm and consists of starter and main course, or main and dessert. You can eat at the outside tables, or take your place in the cool of the restaurant's steel-and-glass interior.

TAKE A VIEW

The strange thing about the Palais des Rois de Majorque (open daily, 10am-6pm, admission €4/£3) is that the high, narrow streets of the old town render it invisible from street level until you reach its vast brick fortifications, which date from the 17th century. Once you're in front of it, though, it's an extraordinary sight - a vast complex, crowned by a brick palace, built for the 13th-century rulers of the kingdom of Mallorca, which then encompassed the Balearic Islands as well as Roussillon. The entrance is on the east side of the complex, and the best views of Perpignan can be found at the top of the walls, from where the Pyrenees are also visible to the south. A drained moat runs round the palace itself, which also contains a Gothic chapel and various stone-walled royal apartments, now home to temporary exhibitions.

CULTURAL AFTERNOON

Easily missed in the hubbub of rue de l'Ange, but well worth a visit, is the Musée Rigaud (Wed-Sun noon-7pm, €4), a 17th-century building which between 1954 and 1956 served as a studio for Picasso. These days, alongside works by Picasso and Dufy (who spent the last 10 years of his life in Perpignan) the museum houses a permanent collection of modern art, as well as ceramics and fine art drawn from the Roussillon region.

A WALK IN THE PARK

Square Bir-Hakeim provides a leafy counterpoint to the squat Palais des Congrès building that lurks in its centre. Here broad avenues of plane trees shade monuments to Catalan resistance in the Second World War, a series of small fountains turn themselves on and off rather disconcertingly, and there's also a small children's garden, with its own merry-go-round.

OUT TO BRUNCH

With most restaurants closed on a Sunday, your best bet is to head for the cafés and brasseries in the centre of town. Café Vert (00 33 4 68 35 47 21) at 11 Place de la République is open from 10am and offers the ideal brunch: tartines méditerranéennes (€7.50/£5), consisting of fresh anchovies (a local speciality), serrano ham and peppers on fried bread. A glass of beer to wash it down with costs €3.20/£2.

SUNDAY MORNING: GO TO CHURCH

On a hill in the east of the old town, behind an old city gate in a slightly intimidating district of the city (watch out for children pestering you for cigarettes and euros) is the red-brick church of St-Jacques (open daily 2-6pm; Mass on Sunday at 11am), parts of which date back to the 14th century. An impressive stretch of city ramparts lies just behind the church, and if you arrive early for Mass, you can also take a stroll round the adjacent Jardin de la Miranda (open daily from 8-11am and 3-6pm, entrance free).

DINNER WITH THE LOCALS

Grand Café de la Paix (00 33 4 68 51 26 98) in Place Arago is a popular restaurant that goes heavy on salads and pizza, but also offers local specialities. The set menu is €18/£13. Open daily from noon-3pm and 6.30-11pm. Away from the crowds, La Carmagnole (00 33 4 68 35 44 46) at 12 rue Révolution Francaise is a pretty bistro, with a few tables outside, specialising in tartes. The plat du jour is €7/£5; tartes start at €6/£4. Open Mon-Sat, noon-2pm and 8-10.30pm. Posher is La Passerelle (00 33 4 68 51 30 65) at 1 Cours Palmarole, next to the Basse. A seafood salad starter costs €9.50/£7; a main course of sole is €18/£13. Open noon-2pm and 7.30-9.45pm; closed Sundays and Monday lunchtime.

AN APERITIF

Sip a glass of locally produced muscat from one of the cafés lining the banks of the Basse, which is more of a canal than a river, criss-crossed with bridges and hemmed in by lawns and beautiful flower-gardens. The deep green of the water should soothe you as the sun goes down.

WINDOW SHOPPING

The pretty, pedestrianised streets around rue de l'Ange are festooned with jaunty red-and-yellow Catalan flags and crammed with boutique shops, all of which are keen to absorb the tourist euro. For regional specialities, try Le Jardin Epicure, near the Musée Rigaud at 22 rue de l'Ange (00 33 4 68 35 62 03), where the helpful owner will enthusiastically try to sell you everything from local wines to peaches preserved in muscat at €13.80 (£10) a pop.

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