From an artistic point of view Besançon's monuments are not many or varied if one excepts the Palais Granvelle and the military defences, which are made up in part of a number of mediæval towers and Vauban's citadel. There are four great sentinel towers surrounding the city, all dating from the period of Charles Quint, but the city gates, piercing the fortification walls, were built also by Vauban between 1668-1711, and are by no means as ancient as they look. The Palais Granvelle, of the sixteenth century, has a fine dignified monumental aspect wholly impressive regardless of its lack of magnitude and the absence of a strict regard for the architectural orders. Liberties have been taken here and there with its outlines which place it beyond the pale of a thoroughly consistent structure, but for all that it undeniably pleases the eye, and more. And what else has one a right to demand unless he is a pedant? In general the civic and domestic architecture of the Franche Comté are of a sobriety which gives them a distinction all their own; the opposite is true of the churches, taking that at Pont-à-Mousson as a concrete example. The street façade of the Palais Granvelle is undeniably fine, with a dignity born of simplicity. Its interior façade, that giving on the courtyard, is freer in treatment, but still not [Illustration: _Palais Granvelle, Besançon_] violent, and its colonnaded cloister forms a quiet retreat in strong contrast with the bustle and noise which push by the portal scarce twenty feet away. The Palais Granvelle actually serves to-day the purpose of headquarters of Besançon's Société Savante. Nicolas Perrenot, Seigneur de Granvelle, its builder (1533-1540), was the chancellor of Charles Quint, and brother of the Cardinal de Granvelle, minister of Charles Quint and Philippe II. He was descended from a noble Burgundian family, not from a blacksmith as has faultily been given by more than one historian. Charles Quint, in writing to his son, after the death of his chancellor--"in his palace at Besançon," said: "My son, I am extremely touched by the death of Granvelle. In him you and I have lost a firm staff upon which to lean." The centre of the admirable town house of the sixteenth century is occupied by a vast courtyard surrounded by a series of Doric columns in marble, supporting a range of low arcades. The principal façade is built of "_marbre du pays_," which is not marble or anything like it, but a very suitable stone for building nevertheless. It might be called "near-marble" by an enterprising modern contractor, and a fortune made off it by skilful advertising. It is better, at any rate, than armoured cement. The structure rises but two stories above the _rez-de-chaussée_, but is topped off with an "_attique_" (a word we all recognize even though it be French) and three great stone _lucarnes_, ornamented with light open-work _consoles à jour_.