What you can see free at the Château des ducs de Bretagne

Free, every day the site is open

• The courtyard, and with it the white tufa flamboyant-Gothic ducal palace facade that Anne de Bretagne added her loggias and stair-tower spire to.
• The rampart walk: roughly 500 metres of curtain wall with seven towers, walked from the top, including the Tour des Espagnols that blew up in 1800.
• The moat gardens outside the wall, open from 8am, an hour and a half before anything else and two hours before the museum.
• The view that makes the trip: black granite fortress on one side of the gateway, white tufa palace on the other. That contrast is the best thing here and nobody charges for it.

That is not a consolation prize. It is roughly half an hour of walking, it works seven days a week including Mondays, and it is the version I recommend to anyone with a train to catch. Timings are on how long you need.

Free at the museum, for some people and one day a month

Under-18s always. Unemployed people, welfare recipients, disabled visitors and their companion, journalists, and Pass Nantes and Pass musées holders. And everyone on the first Sunday of the month, except in July and August, which is the date to move your plans towards if they can move at all. There is also a reduced rate for 18 to 25s, teachers and anyone arriving in the last hour of the day. The full ticket picture is on the tickets page.

Because the free half costs nothing, a booked tour is only ever buying you the story rather than the access. The lowest-priced of them is the old-town guided walk, which is in French only and rates 5.0 from just seven reviews, so treat that as a small sample. The five ways to see this castle, free and otherwise, are compared on the ways to visit page.

Frequently asked questions