Angoulême, France's "Capital Of Cartoons"

Monday, May 21, 2018 Colette Fitzpatrick

Angoulême, known as the "City of the Image" or "Capital of Cartoons", is a French city that is famous for its comic book heritage. Once the nucleus of French paper production, the town later on became home to an incredible thriving local cartoon and graphic novel industry that managed to survive the downturn of the business in the 20th century.

As a result of the importance of this unique industry to the town's economy, there are reminders of this heritage all around the town, with murals adorning many of the buildings. Visiting and wandering around is like exploring a free open-air museum and you never know what you might just stumble across next...

All kinds of images and scenes decorated the walls, from a farmer laughing with his horse to robots shooting lasers from their eyes.

There are 20 walls painted by the Cité de Creation, an association of mural painters and Angoulême, covering both municipal and private buildings. Just start out in the city centre, bring your camera and start wandering – the more aimlessly, the better!

Additionally, the town is also home to the Angoulême International Comics Festival (Festival international de la bande dessinée d'Angoulême), which is the second largest comics festival in Europe after the Lucca Comics & Games in Italy, and the third biggest in the world after Lucca Comics & Games and the Comiket of Japan.

Founded in 1974 by French writers and editors Francis Groux and Jean Mardikian, and comics writer and scholar Claude Moliterni, it attracts around 200,000 people to the town each January.