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Roots Earth in Bordeaux: audio stories about 42 places

Roots Earth has audio stories about 42 places in Bordeaux, France, in Europe. The Bordeaux stories are in all seven Roots Earth languages: English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian. The app needs no account: open Bordeaux, pick a place on the city's map of places and play. Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection. The stories are written by local people.

The 42 places are listed below in the order the app shows them, and again further down with their coordinates. The lists were taken from the Roots Earth catalogue on 15 September 2026.

Published 16 September 2026. Markdown: bordeaux.md

The 42 places in Bordeaux with audio stories

In the order the app shows them.

  1. Place de la Bourse
  2. Miroir d'eau
  3. Bordeaux Cathedral
  4. Pey-Berland Tower
  5. Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux
  6. Place des Quinconces
  7. Monument aux Girondins
  8. Pont de Pierre
  9. Cité du Vin
  10. Grosse Cloche
  11. Porte Cailhau
  12. Basilica of St. Michael
  13. Rue Sainte-Catherine
  14. Port of the Moon (Quays of Bordeaux)
  15. Musée d'Aquitaine
  16. Palais Rohan (City Hall)
  17. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux
  18. Basilica of Saint-Seurin
  19. Church of the Holy Cross
  20. Palais Gallien
  21. Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design
  22. CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art
  23. Great Synagogue of Bordeaux
  24. Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas
  25. Submarine Base & Bassins des Lumières
  26. Bordeaux-Saint-Jean Station
  27. Pont d'Aquitaine
  28. Château Haut-Brion
  29. Marché des Capucins
  30. Les Chartrons
  31. Jardin Public
  32. Place de la Victoire
  33. Darwin Ecosystem
  34. Jardin Botanique de la Bastide
  35. Bordeaux Tramway
  36. Stade Chaban-Delmas
  37. Matmut Atlantique
  38. Arkéa Arena
  39. Parc Bordelais
  40. Cité Frugès (Le Corbusier)
  41. Château Pape Clément
  42. Bègles & Bègles Plage

Is there an audio guide for Place de la Bourse?

Yes. Place de la Bourse has its audio stories in the Roots Earth app: a short introduction and a deeper story, in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian.

It is place 1 of the 42 Bordeaux places in the app, at 44.8415, -0.57. Every one of the other 41 places in the list above has the same two stories.

Roots Earth is not a guided tour: you choose the place on the city's map of places and play its story yourself.

How to use Roots Earth in Bordeaux

Open Roots Earth and choose Bordeaux. The city has its own map of places with all 42 of them on it. Tap the place you are standing in front of, or any other, and play its short introduction or its deeper story. You decide what to listen to and in which order.

You can listen in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian, and there is no account. Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection.

In full

All 42 places in Bordeaux, in the app's order, with their coordinates.

All 42 places in Bordeaux, with coordinates

Every place below has a short introduction and a deeper story in the Roots Earth app, in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian. The names, the coordinates (latitude, longitude) and the one line descriptions are the app's own catalogue values of 15 September 2026; a place without a line here has none that this page can print.

1. Place de la Bourse

Coordinates
44.8415, -0.57
In one line
An eighteenth-century royal square by the architects Jacques and Ange-Jacques Gabriel, the first grand opening of Bordeaux's medieval walls toward the Garonne. Its curved classical facades, carved mascarons and Three Graces fountain anchor the UNESCO-listed riverfront.

2. Miroir d'eau

Coordinates
44.8417, -0.5691
In one line
Often called the world's largest reflecting pool, completed in 2006 to a design by landscape architect Michel Corajoud. A two-centimeter film of water on granite alternates mirror and mist, doubling the facades of Place de la Bourse.

3. Bordeaux Cathedral

Coordinates
44.83778, -0.5775
In one line
Bordeaux's Gothic cathedral, consecrated by Pope Urban II in 1096, where the young Eleanor of Aquitaine married the future King Louis VII in 1137. A UNESCO-listed landmark on the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.

4. Pey-Berland Tower

Coordinates
44.83762, -0.57656
In one line
Around two hundred and thirty steps spiral up to sweeping rooftop views.

5. Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux

Coordinates
44.8425, -0.57361
In one line
Victor Louis's neoclassical theatre, inaugurated in 1780 behind a portico of twelve Corinthian columns crowned by Muses and goddesses. Its grand staircase inspired the Paris Opéra, and its blue-and-gold auditorium still hosts the Opéra National de Bordeaux.

6. Place des Quinconces

Coordinates
44.84556, -0.57361
In one line
One of Europe's largest city squares, laid out around 1820 on the site of the demolished Château Trompette fortress. Rostral columns, trees planted in quincunx patterns and the Monument aux Girondins frame its vast riverside esplanade.

7. Monument aux Girondins

Coordinates
44.8453, -0.57472
In one line
A monument raised between 1894 and 1902 to the Girondin deputies executed during the Revolution's Reign of Terror. A bronze Liberty breaks her chains atop the column, above fountains where wild bronze horses surge from the water.

8. Pont de Pierre

Coordinates
44.83846, -0.56305
In one line
Bordeaux's oldest bridge, ordered by Napoleon I and completed in 1822, carries seventeen brick arches across the Garonne, one for each letter of his name according to legend. Trams, cyclists and walkers now cross where carriages once rattled.

9. Cité du Vin

Coordinates
44.8625, -0.5503
In one line
A swirling tower of glass and lacquered aluminium on the Garonne, opened in 2016 to designs by XTU Architects. Inside, an immersive museum explores wine as a living civilisation, from world vineyards to a panoramic eighth-floor tasting belvedere.

10. Grosse Cloche

Coordinates
44.8353, -0.57139
In one line
Medieval belfry of Bordeaux's old town hall, rebuilt in the fifteenth century over a thirteenth-century gate on the pilgrim road to Santiago. Its twin round towers hold Armande-Louise, a bell of 7,800 kilograms that still rings on great civic occasions.

11. Porte Cailhau

Coordinates
44.83879, -0.56848
In one line
A fairy-tale city gate built from 1493 to 1496, thirty-five meters of turrets, machicolations and conical slate roofs facing the Garonne. Conceived as both defence and triumphal arch, it celebrates King Charles VIII's victory at Fornovo in 1495.

12. Basilica of St. Michael

Coordinates
44.83438, -0.56506
In one line
Flamboyant Gothic basilica raised between the late fourteenth and sixteenth centuries in Bordeaux's liveliest quarter, with a detached bell tower 114 meters high. A UNESCO-listed station on the pilgrim routes to Santiago de Compostela.

13. Rue Sainte-Catherine

Coordinates
44.8398, -0.57418
In one line
Bordeaux's main shopping artery for more than two centuries, running 1. 2 kilometers along a former Roman road from Place de la Comédie to Place de la Victoire. Fully pedestrianised since 1984, it is billed as Europe's longest pedestrian shopping street.

14. Port of the Moon (Quays of Bordeaux)

Coordinates
44.84722, -0.58333
In one line
The crescent-shaped river harbour that gave Bordeaux its emblem and its fortune. Two millennia of trade shaped the sweep of eighteenth-century facades along the Garonne, inscribed by UNESCO in 2007 as an outstanding urban ensemble.

15. Musée d'Aquitaine

Coordinates
44.83564, -0.57497
In one line
Bordeaux's museum of regional history fills a former university faculty on cours Pasteur, tracing approximately 400,000 years of Aquitaine's story, from the carved Venus of Laussel through Roman Burdigala to unflinching galleries on the city's Atlantic slave trade.

16. Palais Rohan (City Hall)

Coordinates
44.8379, -0.5793
In one line
Commissioned in 1771 as the archbishop's palace and Bordeaux's city hall since 1835, this restrained neoclassical ensemble faces the cathedral across Place Pey-Berland, hiding ornate salons and a celebrated stone staircase behind its arcaded entrance screen.

17. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Coordinates
44.8374, -0.581
In one line
Founded in 1801 in Napoleon's network of provincial museums, Bordeaux's museum of fine arts occupies two garden wings beside the city hall. Its collection runs from Titian and Rubens to Delacroix, Redon, Matisse and Picasso.

18. Basilica of Saint-Seurin

Coordinates
44.8432, -0.5857
In one line
One of the oldest sanctuaries in Bordeaux, raised from the 11th century over a 4th-century Christian necropolis and listed by UNESCO on the Santiago pilgrimage routes. Romanesque crypt, carved Gothic porches and medieval choir stalls hide behind a 19th-century facade.

19. Church of the Holy Cross

Coordinates
44.83111, -0.56111
In one line
A Benedictine abbey church founded in the 7th century, destroyed by Arab and Norman raiders and rebuilt around 1100. Its richly carved Romanesque facade and celebrated 18th-century organ preside over the creative Sainte-Croix quarter near the river.

20. Palais Gallien

Coordinates
44.84778, -0.58306
In one line
The ruined amphitheatre of Roman Burdigala, built around 100 CE for approximately 22,000 spectators. One arched entrance and fragments of wall survive among quiet residential streets, the only major monument of the ancient city still visible today.

21. Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design

Coordinates
44.8389, -0.58
In one line
Bordeaux's museum of decorative arts and design fills the Hôtel de Lalande, a mansion built in 1778 for a parliamentary magistrate. Period rooms of porcelain, furniture and silver meet contemporary design, with a former prison hidden in the garden.

22. CAPC Museum of Contemporary Art

Coordinates
44.8481, -0.5718
In one line
A monumental warehouse of 1824, built to store coffee, sugar and spices from the colonial trade, now houses Bordeaux's museum of contemporary art. Keith Haring and Richard Long created works especially for its basilica-like brick nave.

23. Great Synagogue of Bordeaux

Coordinates
44.83361, -0.57384
In one line
Completed in 1882 in Romanesque and Byzantine Revival style, with an iron framework from Gustave Eiffel's workshops, this is the largest Sephardic synagogue in France, serving a community descended from Jews who fled Spain and Portugal.

24. Pont Jacques Chaban-Delmas

Coordinates
44.85861, -0.55167
In one line
A vertical-lift bridge opened in 2013, the longest of its kind in Europe, whose central span rises between four slender pylons so cruise ships can reach the historic quays. Its lighting changes color with the tides of the Garonne.

25. Submarine Base & Bassins des Lumières

Coordinates
44.86991, -0.55864
In one line
A colossal Second World War submarine bunker, begun in 1941 with a concrete roof up to 5. 6 meters thick, that sheltered Italian and German fleets. Since 2020 its dark water basins have housed the world's largest digital art center.

26. Bordeaux-Saint-Jean Station

Coordinates
44.8256, -0.5556
In one line
Bordeaux's main railway station, rebuilt in 1898 by architect Marius Toudoire with a vast iron train shed 56 meters wide covering 17,000 square meters. Since 2017 high-speed trains have linked it to Paris in just over two hours.

27. Pont d'Aquitaine

Coordinates
44.87972, -0.53694
In one line
A steel suspension bridge completed in 1967, carrying Bordeaux's ring road high across the Garonne on a main span of almost 394 meters, among the longest in France.

28. Château Haut-Brion

Coordinates
44.81425, -0.61268
In one line
The oldest of Bordeaux's great wine estates, founded by Jean de Pontac in 1525 and praised in Samuel Pepys's London diary in 1663. It was the only property outside the Médoc ranked a First Growth in the 1855 classification.

29. Marché des Capucins

Coordinates
44.8311, -0.5681
In one line
Bordeaux's beloved covered market in the Saint-Michel quarter, known to locals as the belly of the city. Once the wholesale hub that fed the whole region, it now serves oysters, spices and market-stall banter under one roof.

30. Les Chartrons

Coordinates
44.8516, -0.5721
In one line
Bordeaux's old wine-merchant quarter north of the centre, where foreign négociants aged claret in riverside warehouses for three centuries. Today its long streets mix antique dealers, design shops and cafés beneath the twin spires of Saint-Louis.

31. Jardin Public

Coordinates
44.84895, -0.57801
In one line
A ten-hectare park first created in 1746 under intendant Tourny and transformed into a landscape garden in 1858. Generations of Bordelais have grown up among its ponds, giant sequoias, puppet shows and the city's botanical garden.

32. Place de la Victoire

Coordinates
44.83056, -0.5725
In one line
Student-filled square at the southern end of Rue Sainte-Catherine, guarded by the Porte d'Aquitaine triumphal arch of 1756 and a spiralling marble obelisk celebrating wine. By night it becomes the noisy heart of Bordeaux's Latin quarter.

33. Darwin Ecosystem

Coordinates
44.848, -0.557
In one line
A former army barracks on the right bank reborn as an eco-minded village of coworking spaces, street art, an organic canteen, an urban farm and a vast skate park. Bordeaux's alternative spirit has its headquarters here.

34. Jardin Botanique de la Bastide

Coordinates
44.846, -0.5623
In one line
Bordeaux's contemporary botanical garden, opened in 2003 on the right bank of the Garonne. Eleven recreated landscapes of the Aquitaine basin, a water garden, grain fields and an alley of vines stretch in a long ribbon through the Bastide quarter.

35. Bordeaux Tramway

Coordinates
44.8443, -0.5734
In one line
Four lines and around 130 stations carry the city's daily life along the quays and across the Garonne.

36. Stade Chaban-Delmas

Coordinates
44.82917, -0.59778
In one line
An Art Deco bowl from 1938 in the Saint-Augustin quarter, once home to the Girondins football club and now the fortress of Union Bordeaux Bègles rugby.

37. Matmut Atlantique

Coordinates
44.89722, -0.56167
In one line
Bordeaux's main stadium at Bordeaux-Lac, opened in 2015 to a design by Herzog and de Meuron, its roof carried on a forest of slender white columns. It seats just over 42,000 for football, rugby and major concerts.

38. Arkéa Arena

Coordinates
44.825, -0.53111
In one line
A concert and events arena in Floirac on Bordeaux's right bank, opened in 2018 and designed by Rudy Ricciotti as a smooth pebble left behind by the Garonne. It holds up to 11,300 people.

39. Parc Bordelais

Coordinates
44.85287, -0.60238
In one line
Bordeaux's largest public park, 28 hectares of English-style lawns and century-old plane trees in the Caudéran quarter, opened in 1888. Its shallow lake, puppet theatre and carousel have entertained generations of Bordeaux families.

40. Cité Frugès (Le Corbusier)

Coordinates
44.799, -0.6477
In one line
Le Corbusier's experimental workers' housing estate of 1924 to 1926 in suburban Pessac, fifty-one standardised modernist houses in soft painted colours. Mocked at first and freely altered by its residents, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2016.

41. Château Pape Clément

Coordinates
44.80571, -0.64683
In one line
One of the oldest wine estates in Bordeaux, planted around 1300 for Bertrand de Goth, the future Pope Clement V. Its vines still ripen inside suburban Pessac, producing a classified growth of the Graves region.

42. Bègles & Bègles Plage

Coordinates
44.8086, -0.5478
In one line
An open-air swimming lake on Bordeaux's southern edge, born when gravel dug for the ring road filled with groundwater.

Roots Earth in short

Roots Earth has audio stories about 5,665 places in 130 cities, 25 countries and 6 regions, written by local people.

  • No account
  • Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection
  • Audio stories in English and German in every city, and in Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian in 126 of the 130 cities

Roots Earth for Android is available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rootsearth.app.