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Boulogne-sur-Mer
France's leading fishing port, Boulogne-sur-Mer has kept at the top of its headland an Upper Town entirely enclosed by medieval ramparts, where the basilica of Notre-Dame with its imposing dome and the count's castle, now a museum, stand. The belfry, one of the oldest in the region, with Roman remains in its foundations, still watches over this fortified town, while the livelier Lower Town runs down to the harbour and the quays where fishing boats dock every day. Napoleon I once gathered the Grande Armée here for an invasion of England that never took place, an episode recalled by the Column of the Grande Armée on the heights. Today the town is best known for Nausicaá, one of the largest centres in Europe devoted to discovering the oceans, which draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to this stretch of the Opal Coast each year.
