Provins, Île de France, France

The town of Provins is said to be one of the best preserved medieval towns in France. This was the capital for the Counts of Champagne in the 12th and 13th centuries. They were the first to introduce passports to merchants to ensure safe passage. The fairs held here became the most important in Europe and they also established one of the first financial markets in Europe. Provins became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001.  But to see this town you must pass through the medieval gate and walls.........

Remarkably intact walls on this side. (I only saw two sides of the town).

Provins is located about 80km (48 miles) southeast of Paris.

So let's go through the gate and see what we can see....besides the pigeon that is standing in the roadway.

Hard to imagine some medieval stone mason built this corner all those years ago.

The old beams are crooked in places but, the structure is apparently sound and in this house, a restaurant is in the downstairs portion.

We are getting spoiled going to some of these tourist destinations and not finding any crowds - that is the advantage of touring in the dead of winter I think.

The top sign is a modern reminder that this is a real town - regular people live here, work here, raise families here, not as character actors in a medieval town but as present-day people.......

....and some kind resident feeds this random stray kitty on their windowsill.

I found another random puddle of rain water. As a kid 50 years ago, I enjoyed playing in puddles with popsicle stick boats and now as an adult, puddles are still a magnet to me but now only for getting reflections to make photos.

One is never far from the old castle or church. And what is that on top of the castle?

It is this dragon - how cool is that!

Today was one of those days when it was alternating cloudy then sunny then cloudy then sunny.

The church interior. This image was a vertical in-camera panorama so I left the distortion in it. It's not really curved like that.

The few other tourists we encountered are shown here moseying towards the gate to exit. To demonstrate the magic of  post-processing (and a reminder to not always believe what you see in a photo), there was a car parked on the sidewalk right next to the pedestrians that I didn't want in the image so I removed it and reconstructed the sidewalk and road.  You can tell if you know where to look and then look closely.

These residents take advantage of this beautiful winter day to walk their dog. 

It is difficult to describe the feeling of being in a place like this.  The sense of history through hundreds and hundreds of years as people struggled to survive through wars, famines, plagues, other horrors of the middle ages, into the renaissance and beyond to present day. What a nice place to visit!