On this weekend, every government owned or maintained property is open to the public. Every church, military building, school, government building, museum, and so on, opens their doors and is free admittance. This is country wide, even Le Louvre is free! We took the opportunity to see three churches, a military building, and some Roman architecture. If we had known about it earlier, we could have fit in a bunch more.
The Roman architecture was in the underground parking lot of a government building. When digging the parking lot, they unearthed Roman aqueducts from way back when Besançon was part of the Holy Roman Empire. Instead of destroying history, they decided to forego a section of parking spaces and preserve the aqueduct.
The military building we just happened upon while walking to a church and decided to wander in. They had some old jeeps and motorcycles on display in the courtyard and inside were mannequins wearing uniforms from each each war. There was also a holding cell where prisoners of war were temporarily held during WWI and they had preserved the one wall where prisoners had etched in drawings, names, etc. with their aiglets (the hard tip of the shoelace). Of course, this is what I picked up on during a tour given in French, so some of my info may be slightly off. I didn't take any pictures because it was super intimidating. There were on-duty soldiers posted in every room, in the courtyard, even on the staircase. This place looked fancy. Like, just the rug in one room probably costs more than everything in my living room fancy. So I just kept my hands to my sides.
We mainly used this opportunity to see the churches. Churches here are gorgeous, but most are usually only open for services and we felt uncomfortable just walking in to gawk at the architecture and art. We saw three, though one was admittedly not impressive and no pictures were taken, so I won't cover that one.
First we saw St. Maurice. When we went in there were no members or visitors. It was gorgeous but it seemed as if it was no longer used for services and looked to be more like a giant storage room for religious art. I unfortunately don't have many pictures as it was dark.