Top Dog-Friendly Attractions in Boulogne-sur-Mer

The Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Boulogne crowns the walled Haute-Ville with a 101 m Italianate dome (1827-1866, designed by Abbé Haffreingue), the second-tallest church dome in France after Les Invalides in Paris. The Romanesque crypt below (8 000 sqm, one of the largest in France) preserves Gallo-Roman foundations and 12th-century frescoes. Leashed dogs welcome on the Place Godefroy de Bouillon outside year-round; the cathedral interior and crypt admit only assistance dogs.

The 13th-century medieval castle of the Counts of Boulogne (built 1227-1231 by Philippe Hurepel together with the rampart curtain wall), one of the few intact secular medieval buildings in northern France, now housing a municipal museum with Egyptian, Greek, pre-Columbian and Inuit-Alaskan collections. Leashed dogs welcome year-round in the outer moat and the surrounding rampart walk; the museum interior admits only assistance dogs.

Nausicaá, the largest aquarium in Europe (60 000 sqm, 58 000 marine animals across 1 600 species), occupies the Boulevard Sainte-Beuve seafront opposite the Plage de Boulogne. Dogs are NOT admitted inside the exhibition halls (assistance dogs only), but the seafront esplanade and the Boulevard Sainte-Beuve promenade around the building are fully dog-friendly, and continue 500 m east to the port de pêche, France's largest fishing port by tonnage, where the trawlers land their daily catch and the criée (auction hall) operates.