Troyes is one of those delightful French provincial towns. It is a quiet provincial centre that moves to a rhythm of life different from that of the cities, and is distinguished by some delightful vernacular architecture. English provincial towns rarely enjoy such a slow heartbeat, as they are closer together and busier than the French regional centres. France after all has the same population but ten times more land mass that the UK, making for more isolated communities and giving more importance to regional centres like Troyes whilst at the same time allowing them a degree of separate development from large cities. Rural France holds the keys to French identity, and every French town has its clutch of individual and chain hotels, often appearing to sit nervously on the edge of town, serving it but not being a part of it.

Largest of the chains is Accor, and its hotels, including Ibis, Mercure, Novotel, Sofitel, Etap and Dorint make it one of the largest brand operators in the world. The Mercure in Troyes is a typical representative of this particular part of the group. There are over 738 Mercures with over 87,000 rooms in 47 countries, and curiously for a single brand within a large group operate at different star ratings. The Mercure in Troyes is essentially a three star business hotel, with generously sized rooms but only offering a breakfast service rather than the full restaurant service its size would normally warrant. This is a disappointment because Troyes is not over endowed with restaurants and those I sampled were not wonderful – although my experience of the last fifteen years is that the range and quality of the restaurant experience in France has declined in direct relationship to the increase in regulation by the state.

Warm colouring in the slightly underlit corridors. Rollover to see the bathroom - unusually, these rooms have a separate toilet.

The designer has 'stopped' the corridor ends creaetively with a set piece, and repeated the effect with a cactus garden at the base of the stairwell

The lack of a full restaurant service apart, this is a good quality hotel with impressively sized rooms. Troyes is a town undergoing major change as the old canal system is filled in and redeveloped into boulevards and parking areas, presumably as a prelude to further pedestrianisation of the old town, with its half timbered houses and medieval street pattern. Hailed as a centre of the Champagne, the town’s fortifications are shown on a tourist map as being shaped like a champagne cork. The hotel is in a new development on the edge of the town's central area and has its own secure underground car park, very reassuring when it appears that torching cars is a favourite Friday night activity in France.

The rooms are quiet, and colour throughout is restrained, enhancing the relaxing atmosphere the quiet contributes towards. The corridors are almost under lit, with the designers presenting small vignettes linked to the town's history as a centre of the machine hosiery manufacturing industry. Indeed the reception and bar area are dominated by the presentation of a piece of machinery linked to this past, together with photographic panels showing the old town and explaining its development. This museum like installation in the centre of the lobby unfortunately robs the area of any likelihood of it being used for meetings or guest activities, which are relegated to the periphery of the area.The vignettes at the end of the corridors on the other hand are unusual as visual ‘full stops’ , supplemented by photographic panels on the walls that show the town in the 19th Century, continuing the theme from the reception lobby.This thematic use of pictures may of course be a deliberate attempt to link the hotel into the life of the town, to emphasise its links to the local culture, a quite intelligent approach for a chain hotel seeking to embed itself in the local market.