Provins rises out of the wheat fields of the Brie like something from a film set, and the odd thing is that it is almost entirely real. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries this was one of the four great fair towns of the counts of Champagne, where merchants from Flanders, Italy and beyond met to trade cloth, spices and money. When the fairs declined, Provins simply stopped growing, and so its ramparts, its gates and its medieval upper town survived the centuries more or less intact. UNESCO listed it in 2001 as a rare surviving example of a medieval fair town.
The Tour César, a squat twelfth-century keep with an odd octagonal top on a square base, is the landmark you see from the road, and from its top you look across the roofs of the upper town and out over a plain that seems to go on forever. Beneath the town lies a network of tunnels and cellars cut into the soft rock, once used for storage and later for all sorts of rumoured secret purposes. The red rose of Provins, said to have been brought back from the crusades, turns up in jams, sweets and honey in every shop.
The roads in are a lesson in how to enjoy open country. From Fontainebleau or Paris you cross the plateau of the Brie on long straight roads lined with poplars, with big skies and very little traffic away from the main routes. It is not a place for corners, but the minor roads along the Voulzie valley and towards Donnemarie-Dontilly have some gentle dips and bends. Wind across the plateau can be strong, and in harvest season you will meet slow farm machinery and mud on the road.
Provins, with nearly thirteen thousand people, has all the practical things: fuel at the supermarkets on the edge of town, cafes in the lower town, bakeries and a weekly market. The upper town gets busy on summer weekends, especially during the medieval shows, and the cobbled lanes are steep and polished, so park below and walk up. A slice of Brie de Meaux, the local cheese, with fresh bread on the ramparts, is the correct lunch.