Clermont-Ferrand · Self-guided audio walk

Montferrand, the Rival Bastide

From the Michelin museum to a 900-year-old town that refused to join Clermont for six centuries.

8Stops
1.7 kmDistance
30+ minTime

Photo by Aavitus on Wikimedia Commons

This walk begins where modern Clermont-Ferrand made its fortune, at L'Aventure Michelin on rue du Clos Four, then crosses into Montferrand, a bastide founded around 1120 by the counts of Auvergne as a deliberate rival to bishop-run Clermont. The flat grid of dark volcanic streets still holds some of the city's oldest houses, a Gothic church, and a Friday market that fills Place de la Rodade from 7 am to 1 pm. Montferrand won its own charter in 1196 and kept its own identity until 1731, and the streets still feel like a separate town. You will pass the apothecary's carved shop sign, the Adam and Eve stair tower, a medieval chantry house, and a Renaissance courtyard, then finish at the art museum on Place Louis-Deteix, a tram terminus back to the centre. Allow about two hours and twenty minutes, which includes an hour inside L'Aventure Michelin. The museum costs 13 euros and suggests an hour and a half to two hours for the full exhibition, so a thorough visit makes this a longer day.

Hear it on the street

Get the turn-by-turn audio guide in the app. The narration plays itself as you reach each stop, hands-free and offline.

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Stop by stop

The route

Interactive map of the route. The full stop list below works without it.

Must see

Photo by Jsamwrites on Wikimedia Commons

L'Aventure Michelin

0:00

The Michelin company museum, 2,000 square metres covering 130 years of tyres, Bibendum, and the industry that kept Montferrand alive.

You're starting at the only stop today that charges admission. This is L'Aventure Michelin, at 32 rue du Clos Four, and a ticket costs 13 euros for an adult, 9 euros reduced, and nothing for children under seven. Inside are 2,000 square metres covering 130 years of the company that once employed a large part of Clermont-Ferrand. The museum itself suggests an hour and a half to two hours for the visit, so say it plainly: a full tour makes this a longer day.

If you want to keep the walk to about two and a half hours, save the galleries for another morning. If you do go in, look for the eleven-wheel DS nicknamed Mille Pattes and for Bibendum, the Michelin Man, who has been grinning from French road maps since 1898. Tram line A stops nearby at Stade Marcel Michelin, and that is how you likely got here. When you're ready, we leave the factory district behind and walk east, toward a town that began as a deliberate rival to Clermont and refused to share a name with it for six centuries.

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≈7 min walk to the next stop

Must see

Photo by AnonymousUnknown author on Wikimedia Commons

Place de la Rodade

0:00

The main square of the bastide, laid out on a flat grid, and still the scene of Montferrand's Friday morning market.

You're standing in the middle of the bastide of Montferrand, and the straight streets tell you it was planned, not grown. The counts of Auvergne laid this town out around 1120 as a deliberate rival to Clermont, which answered to its bishop. Montferrand won its own charter in 1196 and kept a separate council, seal, and identity until 1731, when the two towns finally merged into one. Look down: the pavement is dark volcanic stone, the same rock the old houses are built from.

On Friday mornings this square fills from 7 am to 1 pm, and the stalls spill over into the covered hall on Place Poly. Because the town was drawn as a flat grid, you can see the whole route from here, ending at the Gothic church tower two streets ahead. The oldest houses stand just beyond the square, their ground floors once open shops behind stone arcades. Walk east along rue de la Rodade, and the story of Montferrand opens up in a few hundred metres.

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≈6 min walk to the next stop

Local pick

Photo by Romary on Wikimedia Commons

Maison de l'Apothicaire

0:00

A fifteenth-century timber-framed house whose two carved figures, an apothecary and a patient, still advertise its old trade.

This timber-framed house on the corner of rue de la Rodade and rue des Cordeliers is one of the oldest private buildings in the district. It went up in the fifteenth century with a wooden frame filled with pisé, packed earth, and it was protected as a historic monument in 1889, early enough that it was one of the first ordinary houses in France to get that protection, not a castle or a church. Now look up under the roofline. Two small wooden figures act as a shop sign.

One is the apothecary himself, holding a clyster, the big metal syringe of his trade. The other is the patient, bent over with his trousers down, ready for the enema that fifteenth-century medicine prescribed for everything from constipation to a cloudy head. That one joke of a sign has outlasted the shop, the pharmacist, and five hundred years of weather. The house stands empty now, and its timbers need care, which is exactly what an apothecary would have understood.

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≈2 min walk to the next stop

Free preview ends here · stops 4 to 8 continue in the app

Maison d'Adam et Ève

A merchant house from the early thirteenth century, named for the naked couple carved into its spiral stair tower.

in app

Hôtel de la Chanterie

One of Montferrand's oldest stone houses, with Romanesque shop arcades and Gothic windows, once home to the church cantor.

in app

Église Notre-Dame-de-Prospérité

A Gothic church built inside the walls when war made the old parish too dangerous, with fifteen chapels and one lopsided tower.

in app

Hôtel Fontfreyde

A sixteenth-century townhouse whose private courtyard keeps its owner's arms and a medallion of Lucretia.

in app

Musée d'Art Roger-Quilliot

The city's art museum in a seventeenth-century Ursuline convent, on the tram-terminus square that ends the walk.

in app

Good to know

Before you go

How long should I allow for L'Aventure Michelin?

Allow 1.5 to 2 hours for the 2,000 square metre museum, and note the last entry is 90 minutes before closing.

SourceL'Aventure Michelin

Is the Montferrand Friday market worth planning around?

Yes. It fills Place de la Rodade from 7:00 to 13:00 every Friday and is the best time to see the bastide awake.

How do I get back to the centre from Montferrand?

Tram line A stops at the Musée d'Art Roger-Quilliot on Place Louis-Deteix, the terminus square where the walk ends.

SourcePuy-de-Dôme Tourisme

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Provenance · last verified August 21, 2026

Built from the Wayside route itself: the stops, their order, and the walk between them.

Photo by Aavitus on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo by Jsamwrites on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Photo by AnonymousUnknown author on Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Photo by Romary on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0

Photo by Thibdx on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 4.0

Photo by SM63 on Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0