Vichy's pleasures are simultaneously elegant and sobering. The Belle Époque thermal infrastructure is the obvious draw — the grand pump rooms, the casino, the opera — but the city wears its WWII history publicly now, and walking the streets where France's collaborationist government operated from 1940 to 1944 adds a layer that no other French spa town can match. The Allier lakes on the southern fringe provide a counterpoint of open air and nature.