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- Nantes, where American ragtime jazz first landed on European shores, is not your usual city. Birthplace of Jules Verne, Nantes transformed itself from France’s major slavery port, to a youthful, energetic, art-loving city where tradition, a forward-thinking government, and whimsy, blend together in a multicultural, yet very French, enclave.
www.lonelyplanet.com/articles/first-time-guide-to-nantesA first time guide to the French city of Nantes - Lonely Planet
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Jan 3, 2019 · Nantes is the perfect destination for a city break. It’s a vibrant university city where history and the present day are fused to offer visitors art, culture and fun (not to mention really tasty cuisine… you’re in France, after all). Here are Culture Trip’s top reasons why Nantes should be on your holiday radar.
- The city art trail. Nantes is the only city in France to boast a 22km-long art trail, cleverly linking more than 120 artworks from international artists with the city’s heritage, its stunning vistas and lively neighbourhoods.
- Mechanical beasts. Head to the Île de Nantes for a ride on le Grand Éléphant, a colossal machine which carries up to 49 passengers 12m up on its back while spraying spectators with water from its trunk.
- The Château of the Dukes of Brittany. The Château des ducs de Bretagne, built in the late 15th century and expanded by Anne of Brittany, is the city’s most important historic building.
- Museum of Arts. Nestled between the cathedral and the botanical gardens in the heart of the city, the Musée d’arts de Nantes boasts a unique collection spanning nine centuries and featuring 13,000 pieces ranging from the Italian Primitives to contemporary art.
Jul 16, 2023 · Birthplace of Jules Verne, Nantes transformed itself from France’s major slavery port, to a youthful, energetic, art-loving city where tradition, a forward-thinking government, and whimsy, blend together in a multicultural, yet very French, enclave.
- Château Des Ducs de Bretagne
- Les Machines de L’Île
- Passage Pommeraye
- Jardin Des Plantes
- Île Feydeau
- Muséum D’Histoire Naturelle
- Nantes Cathedral
- Cours Cambronne
- Mémorial de l’abolition de l’esclavage
- Musée de L’Imprimerie
The old seat of the Dukes of Brittany is the final château on the Loire before it empties into the Atlantic Ocean. The fortified palace is in the eastern part of the old town, although it’s hard to miss the hefty walls and towers that encircle the refined Grand Logis where the dukes lived. The castle was built in the 13th century and occupied for 3...
The west side of the Île de Nantes is inhabited by whimsical animatronic creatures inspired by Jules Verne’s writings and Leonardo da Vinci’s fanciful gizmos, and brought to life by the artist François Delaroziere. All these extraordinary machines are interactive: The Grand Éléphant for example is 12 metres tall and carries 52 passengers on its bac...
Between Rue de la Fosse and Rue Santeuil, this shopping arcade from 1843 isn’t just a sophisticated place to shop but an ingenious piece of architecture and a photo-worthy sight. The passage was built on a steep slope, and it adapted to the nine-metre height difference with a clever intermediate floor between the two street levels. Passage Pommeray...
Classified as one of France’s “remarkable gardens”, the Jardin des Plantes packs 10,000 species into its seven hectares. The gardens are right in the middle of the city, just ten minutes on foot from the Château des Ducs de Bretagne. It’s no ordinary park: The Palm House here is a fabulous late-19th-century metal and glass structure with plants fro...
When you’re exploring Île Feydeau you may wonder why this district just south of the centre is called an island, or why streets have names like Quai Turenne when there’s no sign of water. Well, it was an island up to the 1930s when one of the arms of the Loire was blocked off. Before the 18th-century Feydeau had been uninhabitable marshland when a ...
Nantes’ Natural History Museum has a fine setting in the city’s old mint, and has galleries for every branch of natural science: There are zoological, paleontological, mineralogical, ethnographical and a host of other collections from fields with long names, assembled since the 1700s. The specimen guaranteed to turn heads is the fin whale skeleton ...
Begun in 1434, it took more than 400 years to build the city’s cathedral. Construction continued through the 1600s in the flamboyant gothic design despite it being long out of fashion by then, because it matched the earlier work. Another intriguing titbit is that Nicolas Fouquet, the high-living Superintendent of Finances in Louis XIV’s court, was ...
Part of a new city district built in the 18th century, Cours Cambronne is a magnificent square between two 180 metre-long terraces of neoclassical mansions. Step along the regal central avenue to see the statue of Pierre Cambronne, a military general born in Nantes and injured in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Sixteen of the glorious pilastered ma...
It helps to remember that much of Nantes’ Ancien Régime splendour was financed by the slave trade. Nantes was the first city in France to ship slaves on an industrial scale and during the 18th century the largest proportion of France’s slave ships departed from this port. So the memorial commemorating the abolition of slavery next to the Loire on Q...
Nantes has had a long relationship with the printing press since publishing its first title, Les Lunettes des Princes by the Breton poet Jean Meschinot, in 1493. This museum was founded in 1986 by master printer Sylvain Chiffoleau and typesetter Robert Colombeau, and has built up an astonishing collection of manual and mechanical printing presses. ...
Today, the Lieu Unique is the national centre for contemporary arts in Nantes, a huge space dedicated to all forms of art expression: photography, theatre, music, debates, poetry and concerts. In addition, the centre aims to be a reference point for the citizens of Nantes and a place for the exchange of cultures : there is also a hammam, a ...
Feb 27, 2024 · From a gorgeous château and a stunning cathedral to the unique Machines de L’lle, Nantes is a paradise for art and architecture lovers. The city is also an eclectic creative hub with a vibrant atmosphere, thanks to the presence of many university students.
Jan 9, 2013 · The city is set on the Loire; not the aristocratic Loire of willowy meadows and fairy-tale châteaux, but the strong-wristed, blue-collar river of hard slate and bone-white tufa stone. Here, 48km from the Atlantic, the river starts to turn maritime and there's the tang of salt in the air, a sense of the world beyond.
