Figeac, France

FIGEAC lies on the River Cle, 71km east of Cahors and some 8km north of the Lot. It's a beautiful town with an unspoilt medieval centre, not too encumbered by tourism. Like many other provincial towns hereabouts,one which quickly became wealthy because of its position on the pilgrim routes to both Rocamadour and Compostela. In the Middle Ages it became a centre of tanning, or open-sided wooden galleries used for drying skins and other produce. Again, it was the Wars of Religion that pushed it into eclipse, for Figeac threw in its Lot with the nearby Protestant stronghold of Montauban and suffered the same punishing reprisals by the victorious royalists in 1662.