The main eastern façade, though somewhat unusual, is of very effective design. Its chief characteristics are two square projecting towers, connected by a raised balcony, with a double staircase surmounted by an ornamental, pierced parapet. The stone towers are decorated with sculpture, in the form of flamboyant church-window tracery below, and panels above, carved with arabesques, foliage, lilies, grotesques, shell ornaments, etc., all in the purest and lightest style of that early Renaissance work, which the discovery of Italy by Charles VIII. had been the means of developing in France. The effect of the whole, though rather conscious and artificial, is quite pleasing and graceful. On the south wall is an inscription of Claude de Guise, 1586. From the buttressed terraces of the public gardens, around the Hotel de Ville, you get some fine views of Cluny and the Tour de l'Eau Bénite, extending right away to the wooded hills beyond the valley of the Grosne. Close to the great gate of the Abbey, in the Rue d'Avril, a narrow street leading upwards out of the Rue de la République, are a number of those Romanesque houses of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, for which Cluny is famous. Up to about sixty years ago, whole streets of this little Burgundian town had remained for seven or eight centuries almost unchanged, but the utilitarian and commercial spirit of the age has made itself felt, even in this out of the way corner of Burgundy, and, one by one, the Romanesque houses are disappearing. Two remain, however, in the middle of the town; and, in addition to those in the Rue d'Avril, there are two adjoining one another in the Rue de la République, above the Hotel de Ville. Beside these is a house of the fifteenth century. Indeed, it would be still possible, in this town, to trace the evolution of domestic architecture, almost without a break, from the twelfth century to the present time.