The Battant quarter sits across the Pont Battant bridge from the main peninsula of old Besançon, and it has a distinctly different character — livelier, less formal, more residential. It was historically the neighbourhood of wine-growers who cultivated the slopes above the city, and then of weavers and craftspeople. Today it is where most of the city's bars and independent restaurants are concentrated, and the Rue Battant in particular is worth exploring in the evening.
The neighbourhood has been under architectural protection since 1964, which has preserved its 17th and 18th-century fabric of narrow streets and stone townhouses. The Église de la Madeleine, a handsome neoclassical church at the heart of the quarter, was designed by Nicolas Nicole in the 1740s. The Battant bridge itself, rebuilt multiple times since the Middle Ages, has the best view of the old town's riverside façade.