Tourist information -
Nantes
Nantes, the former capital of Brittany, is no longer
officially part of the province: it was transferred to the Pays
de la Loire in 1962 when the modern administrative regions were
established. Nonetheless, such bureaucracy is not taken too seriously
in a city whose history is so intimately bound up with Breton fortunes,
and whose inhabitants still consider it to be an integral part of
the province. A considerable medieval centre, it later achieved
great wealth from colonial expeditions, the slave trade and shipbuilding
- activities in turn surpassed by more recent industrial growth.
Although much of the former provincial character of the city has
been lost, thanks to such recent accretions as the tower blocks
masking the Loire and motorways tearing past the city, it remains
to its inhabitants an integral part of Brittany.
The Loire, the source of Nantes' riches, has dwindled
from the centre. As recently as the 1930s the river crossed the
city in seven separate channels, but German labour as part of reparations
for World War I filled in five. What are still called "islands"
in the centre are now surrounded and isolated, not by water, but
by hectic dual carriageways. These are not easy to cross, but they
do at least mean that Nantes is separated into a series of discernible
districts: the older medieval city is concentrated around the cathedral,
with the château prominent in its southeast corner, and the
elegant nineteenth-century town lies to the west, across the cours
des 50-Otages.
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