A bridge carrying water, not cars: the town between Bordeaux and Toulouse that millions pass without turning their heads

Between Bordeaux and Toulouse there is a town of thirty thousand people that millions of travellers pass without turning their heads. It is Agen, and it has a bridge that carries no cars - it carries water.

The nineteenth-century canal bridge carries an entire canal over the river Garonne. Seen from the side it looks like an error of perspective: a boat moving through the air above a river. In engineering terms it is the solution to a banal problem - the canal had to cross the river, and the river would not take it. Visually it is one of the strangest sights in southwest France.

The town is quiet and elegant, and that is precisely why it stays unknown. Agen has the misfortune of lying between two tourist giants, and that is a position in which any town becomes just a motorway sign. Everyone in the Balkans knows a town like that - the one you stop at for coffee and then drive on from.

What is inside

The historic core is medieval, with arcaded streets and timber-framed houses - the kind of facades you usually see across Europe on restored postcards, while here they still stand as ordinary buildings with people living in them. The Saint-Caprais cathedral is under UNESCO protection. The Museum of Fine Arts holds five paintings attributed to Goya, a collection much larger cities would boast about all year.

Agen is also a synonym for something you have probably already eaten without knowing where it came from: the Agen prune, with protected geographical origin. This is the case where one local product carries the town's name around the world, while the town itself leaves the visiting to those who go looking for it.

Practicalities

The covered market hall is where you see the town's real rhythm. For eating, Le Margoton and L'Imprévu come recommended; for sleeping, Hôtel Serra or Château des Jacobins. None of this requires booking six months ahead - which is, in fact, the entire point of places that have not been discovered yet.

The town is also the birthplace of footballer Aymeric Laporte, which is reason enough for somebody to google it for the first time. Sometimes it takes one famous name for a whole town to get noticed - but once you are there, nobody cares who was born where.