Saint-Malo rewards walking above everything else. The ramparts form a complete circuit around the walled city (the Intra-Muros), taking about an hour to walk and offering views of the bay, the islands, and the sea in every direction. The tidal range here is one of the largest in Europe, which means the landscape changes completely between high and low tide — at low water you can walk to Grand Bé and Fort National on foot; at high water they are islands surrounded by the sea.
The beaches of the Intra-Muros and the Sillon causeway are popular in summer and surprisingly good even by Atlantic standards. The old town itself is almost entirely a reconstruction — most of it was destroyed in the Allied bombardment of August 1944 and rebuilt in granite in the original style — but the reconstruction is so good that it is hard to tell.