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A barracks turned alternative village, a submarine base turned art centre, a cinema housed in a medieval church, a forgotten Roman amphitheatre in the middle of Bordeaux, and a Gothic spire separated from its church. Five spots, one city, a thousand lives.

Before becoming an art-house cinema, the Utopia building on Place Camille-Jullian was a medieval church, a naval school for poor kids (with a full-scale frigate under the nave), a sardine cannery, a bicycle shop and a car garage with a mechanical elevator. Seven centuries, seven lives, one building.

Wedged between two Fondaudège apartment blocks, a 22-metre-high Roman ruin has been standing for 1,800 years. The Palais Gallien is not a palace but a 3rd-century amphitheatre that once seated 20,000 spectators. A unique surviving fragment, long forgotten, mistakenly named after a queen linked to Eleanor of Aquitaine.