Nantes

Taking advantage of some discount fares with Volotea, I was able to get return tickets from Montpellier for just €18. Not bad. Interestingly, the cost of the return shuttle from Nantes airport to the city centre was also…€18. Still, not bad to be able to visit a city I had not been to before.

The weather was grey and drizzly most of the time, but some clearer skies in the late afternoon.

Nantes was identified during classical antiquity as a port on the Loire. It was the seat of a bishopric at the end of the Roman era before it was conquered by the Bretons in 851. Although Nantes was the primary residence of the 15th-century dukes of Brittany, Rennes became the provincial capital after the 1532 union of Brittany and France. During the 17th century, after the establishment of the French colonial empire, Nantes gradually became the largest port in France and was responsible for nearly half of the 18th-century French Atlantic slave trade. The French Revolution resulted in an economic decline, but Nantes developed robust industries after 1850 (chiefly in shipbuilding and food processing). Deindustrialisation in the second half of the 20th century spurred the city to adopt a service economy.

It is the administrative seat of the Loire-Atlantique department and the Pays de la Loire region, one of 18 regions of France. Nantes belongs historically and culturally to Brittany, a former duchy and province, and its omission from the modern administrative region of Brittany is controversial.

The city is the sixth-largest in France, with a population of 303,382 in Nantes and a metropolitan area of nearly
950,000 inhabitants. With Saint-Nazaire, a seaport on the Loire estuary, Nantes forms the main north-western French metropolis.

Cathédrale St Pierre et St Paul

The former Porte St Pierre (was built into the old ramparts)

Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne

Founded by the Dukes of Brittany in the 13th century to form a defensive base in Nantes, the castle became the main Breton ducal residence. Under the Ancien Régime, the castle also served as a state prison, and as a barracks and military arsenal. It did not suffer any degradation during the Revolution, but the explosion of the powder reserves in 1800 destroyed much of the monument. In the 19th century, the castle retained its military function, and some restorations were undertaken. Owned by the city of Nantes from 1915, it became a museum in 1924. From 1990 to 2007, it underwent extensive renovation and has been the home of the Nantes History Museum since 2007.