Rouen: The Trial and Last Days of Joan of Arc Tour

You enter Rouen as a time-traveller at the most dangerous moment of the Hundred Years' War. In 1431, this wealthy Norman city stood under Anglo-Burgundian control, its Gothic churches, fortified towers and crowded markets reflecting both prosperity and political anxiety. Here, nineteen-year-old Joan of Arc was brought after her capture near Compiègne and sale to the English. Her victories had helped Charles VII reach his coronation at Reims in 1429, but to her enemies she was a threat that had to be discredited.

Your trail begins at the Donjon de Rouen, the last surviving tower of the Château de Bouvreuil, a fortress begun after Philip II Augustus conquered Normandy in 1204. On 9 May 1431, Joan was brought here and threatened with torture before the judges. From these heavy stones, you follow her story toward the Archiepiscopal Palace beside Notre-Dame Cathedral. In its medieval halls, Bishop Pierre Cauchon directed a trial for heresy designed to undermine the French king through the woman who had helped crown him. The cathedral precinct becomes your next witness: beneath its spires, theology, royal politics and battlefield fame collided.

At the Abbatiale Saint-Ouen, you reach the cemetery garden where, on 24 May, Joan faced a crowd and the prospect of immediate execution. Exhausted, she signed an abjuration, or public recantation, but soon retracted it. The trail then leads through Place de la Pucelle and the Hôtel de Bourgtheroulde, where history and legend became tangled; despite the square's name, this was not the execution site. Finally, you arrive at Place du Vieux-Marché, where the city's marketplace became the stage for the trial's terrible conclusion.