The picture on the left is the Hotel de Ville and on the right is the Castle of the Counts de Angouleme circa 1100AD.

The same place? 

The cathedral city of ANGOULÊME used to be dominated by paper mills that employed thousands of workers and bolstered the city's prosperity. The industry collapsed in the 1980s, and today only a couple of small, specialized mills still function.

In the past, however, the former capital of the Angoumois province was a much-coveted city, being heavily fought over during the fourteenth-century Anglo-French squabbles and again in the sixteenth century during the Wars of Religion, when it was a Protestant stronghold. After the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a good proportion of its citizens – among them many of its skilled papermakers – emigrated to Holland, never to return.

The old town occupies a high steep-sided plateau overlooking a bend in the Charente a natural fortress. It has many charms, if few notable sights. The labyrinthine streets to the north of the delightful place Louvel and the massive Hotel de Ville (see picture) have been largely restored and pedestrianized. It's here that the restaurants and bars are concentrated, while the eastern section, down rue Marango and rue St-Martial, has become the main commercial centre.

On the southern edge of the plateau stands the Cathedral, whose west front – like Notre-Dame at Poitiers – is a fascinating display board for some expressive and lively twelfth-century sculpture, culminating in a Risen Christ with angels and clouds about his head, framed in the usual blaze of a halo. The lively frieze beneath the tympanum to the right of the west door commemorates the recapture of Spanish Zaragoza from the Moors, showing a bishop transfixing a Moorish giant with his lance and Roland killing the Moorish king.