La Pousterle & the Medieval Upper Town Lanes
While most visitors beeline for the cathedral and staircase, the tangle of narrow lanes immediately behind the cathedral — known collectively as La Pousterle quarter — hides some of the best-preserved medieval urban fabric in Occitanie, with half-timbered houses, vaulted passageways called 'pousterles' and tiny squares where cats sleep on warm stone. This is Auch at its quietest and most atmospher
Wandering the Pousterles
The word 'pousterle' refers to a small back gate or covered alley, and Auch has several surviving examples threading between the old canon houses behind the cathedral — Pousterle de Paris is the most photogenic, a low vaulted tunnel that opens suddenly onto a sunlit courtyard.
The streets around Rue Dessoles and Rue du Général-Espagne retain their medieval plot widths, meaning buildings lean toward each other overhead and the light arrives in narrow golden shafts in the afternoon.
Look for the carved stone doorways on the houses of former cathedral canons — several date from the 15th and 16th centuries and display heraldic devices and religious motifs that no guidebook bothers to annotate.
What Else to Discover Nearby
The Musée des Jacobins, housed in a former Jacobin convent on Place Louis-Blanc, contains a remarkable collection of pre-Columbian art from the Americas alongside Gascon paintings and local archaeology — it is chronically undervisited and often pleasantly empty.
Just outside the medieval core, the tree-lined Allées d'Etigny offer a shaded afternoon walk past 18th-century townhouses built during the intendancy of Antoine Mégret d'Étigny, who modernised the city in the 1750s.
The tourist office on Rue Dessoles runs free guided walking tours of the upper town in French (and sometimes English) on summer Saturday mornings — a worthwhile 90 minutes for context and insider anecdotes.
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