Bordeaux travel guide

Top 10 sights in Bordeaux

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Chabe01 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Bordeaux Cathedral

   The cathedral of Bordeaux, where Eleanor of Aquitaine married the future Louis VII in 1137, mostly rebuilt in Gothic between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Its bell tower stands separate because the ground would not carry the weight, and it is a World Heritage site on the pilgrim route.

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2. 

   2© Image details Casio EX ZR1000 Orikrin1998 CC-BY-3.0 · CC BY 3.0

   Basilica of St. Michael, Bordeaux

   A flamboyant Gothic church in Bordeaux, built between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, whose free-standing bell tower reaches a hundred and fourteen metres. It was included in the World Heritage listing of the Santiago pilgrim routes in 1998.

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3. 

   3© Jibi44 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Synagogue

   A Sephardic synagogue of 1882 at 6 Rue du Grand Rabbin Joseph Cohen, one of the largest in France, built for a community descended from Portuguese Jews who came here in the sixteenth century. The Germans used it as a holding camp in 1944; it was restored in the 1950s.

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4. 

   4© =Ludovic Courtès · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Basilica of Saint Severinus of Bordeaux

   A church of the early eleventh century over a late Roman burial ground, whose crypt holds fifth and sixth-century sarcophagi. It was listed as World Heritage in 1998 with the cathedral and Saint-Michel, as part of the French routes to Santiago.

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5. 

   5© Michel BUZE · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

   The city's fine arts museum, in two wings flanking the garden of the Palais Rohan, holding painting and sculpture from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. Titian, Rubens, Delacroix and the Bordeaux-born Odilon Redon are in it.

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6. 

   6© Carole J... · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Château de la Brède

   A moated Gothic castle at La Brède begun in 1306, where Montesquieu was born in 1689 and wrote The Spirit of the Laws. His library and study survive as he left them, and the English park he planted surrounds the water.

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7. 

   7

   place des Quinconces

   One of the largest squares in Europe at 25.6 hectares, laid out from 1820 on the site of the demolished Château Trompette — a fortress whose guns had faced the city rather than any enemy. The Girondins monument of 1902 stands at one end.

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8. 

   8© W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0

   place de la Bourse

   The square Jacques Gabriel and his son designed on the river between 1730 and 1775, breaking open the medieval wall to face the Garonne — the gesture that made modern Bordeaux. The water mirror laid in front of it in 2006 is now the city's most photographed spot.

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9. 

   9© Chris06 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Church of the Holy Cross

   A church that belonged to a Benedictine abbey founded in the seventh century, whose present building is late eleventh and early twelfth century with a Romanesque west front. Its 1748 Dom Bedos organ is one of the most important surviving French baroque instruments.

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10. 

    10© Alexandre Duret-Lutz · CC BY-SA 2.0

    Porte Cailhau

    A city gate of 1495 on the riverbank, built to celebrate Charles VIII's victory at Fornovo in Italy, with a conical slate roof, machicolations and a statue of the king. It served both as a triumphal arch and as a working gate.

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Popular tickets & tours in Bordeaux

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Based on 2025 Wikipedia pageviews — popular places beyond the top 10.

1. 

   1© Chris06 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Cité du Vin

   A wine museum of 2016 on the riverfront, its curved gold and glass skin meant to suggest wine swirling in a glass. Twenty rooms cover wine worldwide rather than just Bordeaux, and the ticket includes a glass at the belvedere on the eighth floor.

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2. 

   2© W. Bulach · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Palais Rohan, Bordeaux

   An eighteenth-century palace built as the archbishop's residence, taken over as the city hall after the Revolution, and still Bordeaux's Hôtel de Ville. The fine arts museum occupies two pavilions in its garden.

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3. 

   3© Tiraden · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Aquitaine Museum

   A museum of Bordeaux and Aquitaine from prehistory to the present, in the former university faculty of letters. Its permanent gallery on Bordeaux and the Atlantic slave trade — the city fitted out about 480 slaving voyages — was the first of its kind in France.

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4. 

   4

   Piliers de Tutelle

   The columns of a Gallo-Roman temple of the third century that stood near the present Grand Théâtre in Roman Burdigala. Louis XIV had them demolished for a citadel in 1677; drawings and salvaged fragments are all that record it.

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5. 

   5© J W from France · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Jardin botanique de Bordeaux

   The historic municipal botanical garden, half a hectare inside the Jardin Public at Place Bardineau, founded in the eighteenth century. A newer garden across the river on the right bank recreates the habitats of Aquitaine by type.

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6. 

   6© Dark Attsios · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Museum of Decorative Arts of Bordeaux

   A museum of decorative arts and design in the Hôtel de Lalande, a merchant's mansion of 1779, arranged room by room with the furniture, porcelain and glass of Bordeaux's wine-trade wealth. A contemporary design section occupies the former prison in the courtyard.

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7. 

   7© Guiguilacagouille · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Fort du Hâ

   The surviving towers of a fortress Charles VII ordered built in 1456, after retaking Bordeaux from the English, to hold the city down. Two towers stand beside the law courts; the rest was demolished in the nineteenth century.

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8. 

   8© Joel camelot · CC BY 3.0

   Château de Blanquefort

   A fortress built and rebuilt between the 11th and 15th centuries in the marshes north of Bordeaux, and counted one of the strongest places in Guyenne until the Fronde. Now a listed ruin, its curtain walls and towers stand in open ground.

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9. 

   9© Langladure · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Musée national des douanes

   The national museum of French customs, on the Place de la Bourse in the eighteenth-century customs house itself. Smuggling, border control and the seizure of contraband are the subject, with paintings, uniforms and confiscated goods.

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10. 

    10© Photographe du château de Mongenan · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Château de Mongenan

    An eighteenth-century folly and garden at Portets outside Bordeaux, kept with its Enlightenment-era interiors and planting intact. It shows how a provincial noble household actually lived, down to the herb beds and the masonic lodge room.

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