Explore the real-world places that appear in Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include Norman Countryside near Caen, Abbaye aux Hommes, Caen, Mont-Saint-Michel, Rouen Cathedral, Crécy Battlefield and 8 more.
Lower Normandy — the dead village where Thomas finds Delphine
The story begins in plague-stricken Normandy in 1348. Thomas, a disgraced and bitter knight, finds a young orphan girl alone in a village emptied by the Black Death. The girl, Delphine, tells him the plague is only part of a larger cataclysm, a second war in heaven in which Lucifer's fallen angels are rising. She persuades the faithless Thomas to escort her to Avignon. The village is fictional, so this marker stands for the Norman countryside in which the opening is set.
Caen was a major Norman city and was sacked by Edward III's English army in July 1346 during the Crécy campaign. The Black Death reached Normandy in 1348 and killed a large share of its rural population. Many villages were abandoned or left nearly empty.
Caen is a lively university city, and the surrounding Calvados countryside is farmland dotted with medieval churches and manors. Much of the city was rebuilt after the Second World War. Its medieval abbeys survive.
Rue Guillaume le Conquérant — Norman church power
This abbey is not a scene in the book. It stands for the Norman Church that Thomas and Delphine leave behind. Their journey carries them from a land where the faithful and the clergy are dying toward the seat of the papacy. In Delphine's vision, institutions like this one are the ground the war between heaven and hell is fought over.
William the Conqueror founded the abbey around 1063, and he is buried there. It is one of the great Romanesque buildings of Normandy, and it survived the wars and plagues of the 14th century.
The abbey church of Saint-Étienne is open to visitors. The conventual buildings house Caen's city hall.
Visit: Abbaye aux Hommes (historic site)
Normandy coast — the archangel's sanctuary
Mont-Saint-Michel is not a scene in the novel. It is the great Norman shrine to the archangel Michael, who led God's armies against Lucifer, which is the very war Delphine says has resumed. It marks the angelic and holy side of Thomas's Normandy.
The abbey on the tidal island was founded in the 8th century and expanded in the Romanesque and Gothic periods. During the Hundred Years' War its garrison held out against English siege, and its fortifications were strengthened.
The island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of France's most visited monuments. Visitors can tour the abbey, ramparts and village.
Visit: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey (historic site)
Place de la Cathédrale — gateway of the Seine valley
Rouen is the great city of the Seine and a natural point on a road leading from Normandy toward the interior of France. For Thomas and Delphine it represents a stage in a journey through a land stripped of order. The plague has emptied churches and cities, and wandering mobs and dead-ridden roads make travel dangerous.
Rouen's Gothic cathedral was begun in the 12th century and took centuries to complete. The city was a leading cloth-trading centre and was hit hard by the plague in 1348.
The cathedral is a major tourist attraction, famed for its facade, which Claude Monet painted repeatedly. It is open to visitors daily.
Visit: Rouen Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Rouen) (landmark)
Crécy-en-Ponthieu — Thomas's world of war
Crécy is not a scene in the book. Thomas is a knight whose past is stained by the Hundred Years' War, and the great English victory of 1346 forms the background of the world he comes from. His violent history and loss of honour make him a reluctant protector of Delphine. The battle stands for the human war that the supernatural war in the novel now overshadows.
On 26 August 1346 Edward III's English army, relying heavily on longbowmen, destroyed a larger French force at Crécy. Many French nobles died, and the battle changed European warfare.
The battlefield is open farmland with a viewing tower and a visitor centre in the village. A museum covers the battle.
Visit: Crécy Battlefield Site (Espace Chevalerie) (historic site)
Île de la Cité — the capital in plague
Paris was one of the great cities of the plague-ridden France through which the pair travel. It is a symbol of the collapse of earthly order in 1348. Its churches and cemeteries fill with the dead while the faithful wonder whether the plague is a judgment from God. Delphine's claim that the plague is only one part of a larger war has its most dramatic backdrop in a place like this.
Notre-Dame was begun in 1163 and largely completed by the mid-14th century. Paris lost a large part of its population to the Black Death in 1348-49.
Notre-Dame suffered a major fire in 2019 and has been undergoing restoration, reopening in December 2024. The square and surrounding area are open to the public.
Visit: Notre-Dame de Paris (landmark)
Chartres — a great pilgrim church on the road
Chartres is a symbol of the pilgrim's road and of heaven's presence on earth. It fits the novel's central tension between faith and despair. Thomas, who has lost his belief, travels with a child who sees angels, and monumental churches of this kind loom over their journey as a reminder of what the world once believed.
The present cathedral was built mainly between 1194 and 1220 after a fire, and it houses the Sancta Camisa relic. It has been a pilgrimage destination for centuries and has remarkably well-preserved stained glass.
Chartres Cathedral is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, open to visitors and pilgrims. It is famous for its 13th-century glass and its labyrinth.
Visit: Chartres Cathedral (landmark)
Orléans — crossing the Loire
Any traveller heading south from Normandy toward Avignon must cross the Loire, and Orléans was a key crossing and market town. The crossing stands for the central stretch of Thomas and Delphine's trek. The countryside here is dangerous and lawless, with the dying, the desperate and the predatory on the roads.
Orléans was an important medieval city on the Loire with a strategic bridge. Its cathedral, Sainte-Croix, was rebuilt after the Wars of Religion. The city is later famed for Joan of Arc's relief of the siege in 1429.
Orléans is a regional capital with a rebuilt cathedral and a lively riverfront. Visitors can walk the old town and see the Joan of Arc house museum.
Visit: Orléans Cathedral (Cathédrale Sainte-Croix) (landmark)
Burgundy — the great monastic ruin on the road south
Cluny is not named in the novel. It represents the great monastic institutions of the French interior, which Thomas and Delphine would pass on a southward route. In the world of the book, monasteries and abbeys stand at the front line of the cosmic war.
Founded in 910, Cluny became the heart of a huge network of monasteries and was the largest church in Christendom until St. Peter's in Rome. Much of it was destroyed after the French Revolution.
The surviving remains of the abbey can be visited, and a digital tour reconstructs the lost church. It is managed by the Centre des monuments nationaux.
Visit: Cluny Abbey (Abbaye de Cluny) (historic site)
Saint-Jean Cathedral — the road to Avignon follows the Rhône
The route to Avignon follows the Rhône valley south. Lyon stands for the last big stretch of the journey, in which the danger rises as the pair approach the papal city. Delphine's mission draws near, and so do the demonic forces gathering to oppose her.
Lyon was a major trade city and the site of two ecumenical councils in the 13th century. Its Cathédrale Saint-Jean was built between the 12th and 15th centuries.
Old Lyon is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the cathedral is open to the public. It houses a famous astronomical clock.
Visit: Lyon Cathedral (Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste) (landmark)
Avignon — the broken bridge over the Rhône
The river crossing into Avignon is the last obstacle on the road to the papal city. In a story built around a pilgrimage to Avignon, it is the threshold between the lawless countryside and the seat of the Church. Thomas and Delphine come here to reach the culmination of her mission.
The bridge was built in the 12th century and repeatedly damaged by floods and rebuilt. It was partly abandoned in the 17th century, leaving only four arches.
The surviving arches and the Chapel of Saint Nicholas are open to visitors. The bridge is celebrated in the French song 'Sur le pont d'Avignon'.
Visit: Pont Saint-Bénézet (Pont d'Avignon) (monument)
Place du Palais, Avignon — the papal seat
Avignon is the destination of the journey: the place where Delphine says she must confront the evil that has devastated the earth. The papal court is the centre of the Church in 1348, and its politics and corruption are the stage on which the war between angels and demons comes to a head. Here Thomas faces the question of whether he can be redeemed.
The Palais des Papes was built in the 14th century, when the papacy was based in Avignon rather than Rome. Pope Clement VI, who reigned during the Black Death, expanded the palace and sheltered people during the plague.
The palace is the largest Gothic palace in Europe and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is open to visitors and hosts events during the Avignon Festival.
Visit: Palais des Papes (historic site)
Across the Rhône from Avignon — the French royal side
Across the Rhône from papal Avignon lay the kingdom of France, so the river was a border between two powers. This marker stands for that sense of a world caught between competing authorities. Thomas and Delphine are likewise caught between earthly power and divine war.
Villeneuve-lès-Avignon grew in the 14th century as cardinals built residences on the French bank of the Rhône. Fort Saint-André was built to guard the border against the papal city.
The fort and its abbey gardens are open to visitors. The site offers a view across the river toward Avignon.
Visit: Fort Saint-André (historic site)
More by Christopher Buehlman: All Christopher Buehlman books
Other nearby maps: The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah locations map · In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust locations map · The Paris Novel by Ruth Reichl locations map · Maigret by Georges Simenon locations map