Category: Pays de la Loire

Nantes

Before my arrival in Nantes, France I was surprised by the nod of approval given by French people in Australia. It has a population of 200,000 people making it lively while retaining a beautiful sense of space and though one of my earliest experiences of small French cities, I expect Nantes to remain as my benchmark for assessing the quality of life in all other places.

 

 

History (Britannica)

Nantes, city, Loire-Atlantique département, Pays de la Loire région, western France. Nantes is situated at the head of the estuary of the Loire River, where it is joined by the Erdre and the Sèvre rivers, 35 miles (56 km) from the sea and southwest of Paris. It is one of the French towns that has changed the most in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Nantes derives its name from the Namnètes, a Gallic tribe who made it their capital. It became a commercial centre under the Romans. The Normans, after pillaging the town, occupied it from 834 to 936. After a long struggle in the Middle Ages between the counts of Nantes and Rennes for the sovereignty of Brittany, in 1560, Francis II, king of France (1559–60), granted Nantes a communal constitution. During the Wars of Religion (1562–98), Nantes joined the Catholic League and only opened its gates to Henry IV, king of France (1589–1610), in 1598, the same year he signed the Edict of Nantes, a charter assuring religious and civil liberties to the Protestants. During the French Revolution, Nantes suffered the ruthless repression of an envoy of the revolutionary Committee of Public Safety named Jean-Baptiste Carrier. In 1793 Carrier replaced executions by the guillotine, which he considered too slow, with mass drownings. The city was occupied by the Germans during World War II.

Greatly modified by an urban renewal plan that was adopted in 1920, Nantes was further altered and extended after having been partly destroyed in World War II. In the 1960s Nantes was designated as one of the eight provincial counterweights to reduce the dominance of Paris on French national life. It has become a dynamic regional centre, with a diversified economic structure. Traditional industries such as food processing, engineering, and the manufacture of components for the aeronautical industry remain important, but recent growth has occurred in fields such as biotechnology. A large scientific park, created in 1987, was designed to foster these activities. Nantes is also a major business centre and is the home of many regional headquarters of both industrial and services firms. A number of public and private sector offices have relocated from Paris to the city. Nantes has a large higher education section. The original university (founded 1460) was abolished during the French Revolution, but a new one was established in 1961. Tourism has been stimulated by redevelopment of part of the former docklands and the building of specialized conference facilities.

 

 

 

 

 

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Wikiwand Timeline of Nantes

Google Maps – Nantes

 

 

Clisson

 

 

Clisson is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique département in Pays de la Loire in western France. It is situated at the confluence of the Sèvre Nantaise and the Moine 27 km southeast of Nantes by rail. The town and the celebrated family of Clisson, the most famous members being Olivier IV de Clisson and Jeanne de Clisson, take their name from the stronghold, its imposing ruins in part dating from the thirteenth century. Within then independent Brittany, Château de Clisson, situated at a crossroads for Anjou and Poitou, was one of the great fortified places on the frontiers of the Duchy of Brittany. The first Lords of Clisson occupied the site from the 11th century. They are mentioned for the first time in 1040. Clisson was then the seat of a powerful châtellenie covering 23 parishes.

 

The castle

Most of the present castle was built in the 13th century. Constructed by Guillaume de Clisson, on a rocky outcrop dominating the Sèvre Nantaise, its form at that time was an irregular polygon flanked by round towers and isolated from the rocky plateau by a shallow moat. In the 14th century, Olivier III de Clisson incorporated the gatehouse into a massive quadrilangular keep. The two semicircular towers of the gatehouse collapsed in the 17th century. The castle became the setting for the turbulent lives of Olivier IV de Clisson and Olivier V de Clisson, named Constable of France in succession to Du Guesclin in 1380. The castle is said to be haunted by Jeanne de Clisson wife of Olivier IV.

In the 15th century, the fortifications were modernised to permit the use of artillery. In the second half of the century, the former entrance was modified and the curtain wall was extended and completed by a barbican. At the same time, the castle was enlarged to the west with a new rectangular enclosure nearly 100 m long, armed with towers with artillery casemates.

After 1420, the castle became the property of the Duke of Brittany. It was one of the favourite residences of Duke Francis II who was remarried there, to Marguerite de Foix in 1474. He built a second rectangular enceinte flanked by artillery towers. Around 1590, the troubled period of the French Wars of Religion necessitated the construction of three terraced bastions on the south. Thus, three lines of defence in depth protected the site.

Until the 17th century, the castle was the residence of the Avaugour family, descendants of François Ier d’Avaugour, illegitimate son of François II. He modified and transformed the castle to suit the tastes and fashions of the day. During the War in the Vendée, the town and its castle were burned by the Infernal columns of Jean-Baptiste Kléber. In 1807, the estate was bought by the sculptor François-Frédéric Lemot with the goal of conservation. During the 19th century, the ruined castle attracted Romantic painters and sculptors.

 

The castle ruins (seen here in the 1890s) were a source of inspiration for Romantic artists.

The remains of the castle were classed as a monument historique by a French Ministry of Culture decree of 13 August 1924. In 1962, the castle was sold by the Lemot family to the Conseil général of the Loire-Atlantique, who carried out important restoration works with the assistance of the French Ministry of Culture.

 

Permanent exhibition space at the estate

 

The influence of François-Frédéric Lemot is outstanding as he brought his taste for Italian art and architecture to Clisson.

 

Today Clisson exists as a flavour of Italy within France’s North West and the building styles and materials attest to this. Red terracotta roof tiles mix with slate and the rectangular tower of l’Eglise Notre-Dame de Clisson sits atop the building as it cascades down the slope to the narrow roadways leading to the river. Bright geraniums and pizza restaurants make for great outdoor the market in Summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Google Maps – Clisson

Clisson

 

Today Clisson exists as a flavour of Italy within France’s North West and the building styles and materials attest to this. Red terracotta roof tiles mix with slate and the rectangular tower of l’Eglise Notre-Dame de Clisson sits atop the building as it cascades down the slope to the narrow roadways leading to the river. Bright geraniums and pizza restaurants make for great outdoor the market in Summer. The influence of François-Frédéric Lemot is outstanding as he brought his taste for Italian art and architecture to Clisson.

 

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Rezé

A walk to La Poste is to experience a street that has been under repair for seven years and now one of the final stages is taking place in the form of block work that has a team of tradespeople bending all day as they meticulously cut and place stones. This artful mosaic of granite seems to be a statement of trust in a work that shouldn’t need touching for another 100 years. No wonder the underlying infrastructure needs to be deliberated over for so long but the end result is testimony to the respect given to these historical streets in French towns and cities.

On my way into Nantes I prefer to walk one stop back to the terminus at Rezé, adding time just to experience the grass tramlines. What could be considered mundane zones in France are treated with attention and expense elevating their status for the appreciation by pedestrians and motorists. A dry corner car park has the added value of a cooling grid canopy of pruned greenery and is located opposite contemporary shards, large rusted metal sculptures strewn in the grass at the entry point to the Reze commune. Shabby wild flowers are intentional, carpeting the tramlines once the line turns the corner towards Nantes a couple of km away. Every French town has a boulangerie and the geometry of this bold yellow building sits well within the precinct, adding a sense of exuberance to an area otherwise dominated by plain multi story accommodation.

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Nantes Parks – Parc De La Morinière

 

I won’t ever forget the exhilaration during my first Summer in France as I discovered the manor and its Japanese garden reached via a park which shared an overgrown boundary with the rear of our garden. I came to it unexpectedly under the huge Japanese elm at the end of three kilometers of cow paddocks and shady riverbank paths, somewhere between lazy suburbia and heaven. We sat and ate cake from an old painted cake tin and I knew there and then, I was in France. The soft shadows of the glades give way to remnants of an industrial past.

 

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Nantes

Before my arrival in Nantes in Western France I was surprised by the nod of approval given by French people in Australia. It has a population of 200,000 people making it lively while retaining a beautiful sense of space and though one of my earliest experiences of small French cities, I expect Nantes to remain as my benchmark for assessing the quality of life in all other places.

 

Read the history ..

Nantes Parks – Parc de Procé

 

 

Parc de Procé has been appreciated by many people including Andre Breton, quoted on a plaque outside on the terrace café wall. Like most gardens in France they are entered by tall wrought iron gates and a café is housed in the old manor. Time doesn’t matter as we eat gelato and chat on the terrace looking down on the front park and fountain through the gnarled branches of the very old and well pruned crepe myrtle trees. Pruning is an art form in France where ever it occurs and I imagine taken for granted a little by the French, but to me the shapes are a key to recalling and respecting formalities of times past.  A large Dahlia collection is secreted far away in the top corner of the gardens and comes as a surprise like many things. The species are all labelled and can be easily perused from markers along the stone mosaic paths.  A traditional rotunda, mint green sits playfully among the flowers.

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Nantes Parks – Chantrerie

 

 

During my first Summer I experienced France at some of the finest moments, the long sweeping shadows of the Chantrerie defining the late afternoon, small sparkling flower heads leaning in as we lunched alone on the rear manor house steps oblivious to any activity the caryatids behind us had witnessed in centuries past. Nantes is visible only as a sole highrise, its only high rise tower, occupying a small spot at the centre of the  horizon, the forest in the foreground and the Erdre River in the mid ground.

 

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