Chapelle St-Étienne and Basilique St-Donatien et St-Rogatien

The other Roman site in Nantes is the Chapelle St-Étienne, which is now in the cemetery of the Basilique St-Donatien et St-Rogatien. To me, this site is interesting because it represents almost the whole span of Nantes' history, all in one place.

It's about 2 kilometres northwest of the old city. Around the same time that the walls were built in the 3rd century, there was a Roman villa here. It was probably the home of the local Gallo-Roman magistrate, who was, according to tradition, the father of the first two Christian martyrs in Nantes, Donatian and Rogatian.

Christianity was new to Nantes. The first bishop, St. Clair, was also supposedly appointed around the late 3rd century. According to the story, Donatian was converted and baptised around the year 300 by the bishop (maybe St. Clair). Donatian introduced his elder brother Rogatian to Christianity as well, but because Christians were still being persecuted throughout the Empire at the time, the bishop fled and Rogatian could not be baptised. Both brothers were arrested, tortured, and sentenced to death by the governor of Gaul when they refused to worship the Roman gods.

There really were Roman persecutions and many Christians were killed, but I don't know whether Donatian and Rogatian actually existed. It was popular for European cities to claim an association with Christianity dating back before the Roman Empire was officially Christianized in the 4th century. I always thought their names gave them away: "Donatianus" is the one who has already been given baptism (from the Latin "donare", "to give"), and "Rogatianus" is the one seeking baptism (from "rogare", "to ask"). I don't know how likely this is, but I would assume they replaced a local worship of the Roman twin gods Castor and Pollux. Donatian and Rogatian were supposed to have been martyred on May 24, which is also approximately the beginning of the astrological sign of Gemini, i.e. Castor and Pollux. But whether they were real or not, it was only a few years later that persecutions of Christians ended, and Christianity became the official religion of the Empire.

The brothers are the patron saints of Nantes and they are commemorated in several places. For example, on the road between the cathedral and their namesake basilica, there is a monument at the spot where they are traditionally supposed to have been martyred (above, 63, rue Dufour). Two granite crosses were set up there in the 19th century, replacing wooden crosses that had been there since "time immemorial", according to the plaque.

South wall.

Chapelle Saint-Étienne

Location: Cimitière Saint-Donatien (47°13′45″N, 1°32′30″W).

Donatian and Rogatian were supposed to have been buried on the grounds of their family's villa, and the first church on the spot where the current Basilique St-Donatien et St-Rogatien now stands was constructed around their tomb in the 4th century. In the cemetery of that church, a chapel was built, probably in the 6th century. This is the oldest religious building (and cemetery) in Nantes in continuous use. The city promotes the chapel as the oldest construction of any kind in Nantes, although the Roman wall is actually older. But unlike the wall, it is largely intact and easily accessible.

Detail of the north wall.

It's not quite a true Roman chapel, because it was built several hundred years after the wall, during the Merovingian era. The Empire was already beginning to collapse when the wall was built at the end of the 3rd century, and over the next few centuries, this part of the country was settled by different peoples from other parts of the Empire, or from outside of it. Brittany is named after Celtic tribes from Britain, who were probably escaping from the Germanic invasions of the island (such as the Angles, after whom England is named). Other Germanic tribes also invaded and settled in Gaul. They generally called themselves Franks, which is why the country is now called France. By the 5th century, one Frankish tribe, the Merovingians, ruled most of Roman Gaul, including Nantes (but not the rest of Brittany). As I mentioned in the last post, there was a Merovingian cemetery outside the Roman wall, beside the cathedral.

There were still Roman citizens in France who could build things in the old Roman style, such as this chapel. The small squared stones and layers of thinner red bricks that are obvious signs of Roman masonry are also evident in the chapel, but here, they are a bit different. The stones and the bricks just aren't as skillfully constructed. Maybe by this point, they had lost some of the knowledge and skills used to build the earlier wall. Or, as often happens with the Merovingians, they attempted to copy something Roman but they couldn't get it exactly right.

Reconstructed interior.

Over the centuries the chapel has been modified. The east wall, currently the back of the chapel, had a Gothic-style door and window cut into it in the later Middle Ages, but they have since been covered over. Other doors and windows were cut into the other walls too. 

The most unusual part of the chapel is the interior. It usually isn't open, but I was able to go inside during the Journées du patrimoine in September 2012. It used to be a functional chapel, dedicated to the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen. But whatever used to be inside is long gone. In the 19th century someone attempted to restore it, based on what they imagined the inside of a Roman chapel would have looked like. There are lots of quasi-Roman geometric designs, square stones and red bricks, but it's probably nothing like the original interior.

Basilique St-Donatien et St-Rogatien

Location: 47°13′45″N, 1°32′33″W.

In the fourth century, after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, but before the Chapelle St-Étienne was built, Donatian and Rogatian's tomb had become a pilgrimage site. The church that was built over top of it was destroyed in the 9th century by the Vikings, at the same time that they damaged the Roman wall, looted several other churches, and killed the bishop in the cathedral. Other churches were built and destroyed on the same spot over the next thousand years, but the current basilica was constructed in the 1870s and 1880s. The bishop of Nantes vowed to build the current structure if Nantes was spared from attack during the Franco-Prussian war in 1871. In the end, Nantes was not attacked, and the bishop kept his vow.

The exterior seems to be modelled somewhat after Notre-Dame in Paris, although on a much smaller scale. The style is partly Gothic revival and partly Romanesque revival, but like the chapel compared to the Roman wall, it's not as nice as a real Gothic church (like Notre-Dame and the cathedral in Nantes). There are 10 statues above the portal, depicting various saints, bishops, and kings. The square in front of the basilica also has a large equestrian statue of Joan of Arc.

As far as I know there's nothing left of the original church, but Donatian and Rogatian's 4th-century marble tomb is still there. Their bones are no longer inside of it, though: the relics were transferred to the cathedral in 1145, and probably destroyed during the Revolution. The interior of the basilica is a fairly typical 19th-century French church; it looks a lot like the other churches in Nantes from the same period (like the other basilica, St-Nicolas, and the churches of St-Clément and St-Similien).

Interior, facing the apse.

The most interesting part of the interior for me is the crypt. It's built into the crypt from the medieval church, although it has been completely reconstructed. There is a monument there indicating Donatian and Rogatian's original burial spot. 

Since this basilica is not a national historical site and it's not located in the heart of the old city, it's actually difficult to get inside. The cemetery is always open and the chapel is always easy to see (except the inside), but whenever I tried to visit the basilica, it was closed. I had to hang around during mass one Sunday so I could take pictures inside afterwards. It is a local historical monument though, so it was also open during the Journées du patrimoine in September 2012.

Interior, facing the portal.

Many other places in Nantes commemorate Donatian and Rogatian. The two streets leading up to the basilica are named after them. There are statues of them in the cathedral, and they are depicted on a relief carved into a building at the corner of Rue de la Barillerie and Rue de la Paix, near the large medieval house in Place du Change.

The basilica and the chapel were a bit out of the way and I didn't go there often, but I like the sense of continuity at the site: both the chapel and the basilica were built after Germanic invasions, 1300 years apart. Like the Roman wall in the playground of the elementary school, you can see the connection between Roman and modern Nantes all in one spot.

Donatian and Rogatian's original marble tomb
(the wooden top is more recent)

The crypt, with a monument marking
Donatian and Rogatian's original burial spot. 

Mosaic above the portal.

Detail of the statues.

Joan of Arc statue.

Statue of St. Donatian in the cathedral.

Relief of Donatian and Rogatian at Place du Change.

Église Saint-Donatien, Orléans

Église Saint-Donatien, Orléans 

Donatian and Rogatian were popular elsewhere along the Loire River as well, and there is a church dedicated to them in Orléans. This church dates from the 12th century, from around the same time that the relics of Donatian and Rogatien were transferred to the cathedral in Nantes. Most of the current structure is much more recent though, and it's a bit difficult to find now since there are other buildings surrounding it. I was in Orléans in May 2015, and I happened to find the church when someone who worked there was inside. It wasn't supposed to be open, so the lights weren't on and I couldn't stay to take better pictures. But I did get to stay longer than I should have - I was able to talk to the guy about Donatian and Rogatian, Nantes, and medieval architecture, and he let me take these few pictures at least.

12th-century nave

                                    Stained glass windows in Orléans about the life and death of Donatian and Rogatian.

Fire in Nantes

The basilica in Nantes caught fire on June 15, 2015. The roof was destroyed but the rest of the building seems to be fine. The same thing happened to the cathedral in the 1970s. The basilica's roof is currently being rebuilt.

Roman wall of Nantes

A map of medieval Nantes and its Roman and medieval walls.

Under the Roman Empire, Nantes was one of the major cities of Gaul, and the main Atlantic port on the Loire River. The Celtic Namnetes inhabited the territory north of the Loire in the pre-Roman and Roman era, and Julius Caesar passed through the area during his conquest of Gaul in 56 BC. 

Latin inscription, now located in the history museum in the castle.

In the third century AD, Nantes and the rest of Gaul was beginning to suffer from the decline of the Roman Empire and the invasions of Germanic tribes, so around the end of the century, a wall was built around the city.

I first realized there was a Roman wall because of the "Wiki Loves Monuments" project on Wikimedia Commons, the photo database of Wikipedia, and the French Wikipedia's list of national historical monuments in Nantes. The possibility that there might be Roman remains right outside my door was extremely exciting, and I was pretty much obsessed with finding them. There's nothing like that in Canada!

The Couvent des Cordeliers

Location: 9, rue du Refuge; 47° 13′ 08″ N, 1° 33′ 10″ W
 
According to the coordinates in the Wikipedia list, the remains of the wall were about a minute away from my apartment, and appeared to be referring to this wall on Rue des Cordeliers:

I was a bit disappointed...it didn't look very Roman. The bricks should be lighter, smaller, and there should be rows of thinner red bricks in between. But I could be wrong, maybe not all Roman walls look like that, maybe this one is different. All I knew about Roman masonry came from books and pictures, so how could I doubt this actual physical example?

Still, I had to do some more searching, and eventually I realized that the Google coordinates were a few metres behind this. The Roman wall is actually inside an old Franciscan monastery, the Couvent des Cordeliers, now the courtyard of an elementary school, where it can't be seen unless you are on the grounds of the school itself.

Since I passed the school everyday on my way to and from work, I knew that the gate to the courtyard was open when the children were being let out for the day. One day I went up to the one of the teachers, in a crowd of children and their parents, and told her that this might sound a bit crazy, but there is a Roman wall inside your school, and could I take some pictures of it?  I don't think I could just walk up to a school full of kids in Canada and ask to go inside...that's kind of creepy. But no school at home has anything as awesome as a Roman wall inside of it.

Fortunately, the teacher knew what I was talking about and said I could go see it:

Exactly what I expected a Roman wall to look like! It's mostly in ruins, and only a small part of the original extent of the entire wall, but it was still exciting to see. This is the exterior side, what someone approaching the city from the north would have seen. It's about 18 metres long and 5 metres high, and its base is a bit lower than the current level of the school's courtyard. Over the centuries, other buildings have been built into it or alongside it - in the Middle Ages it was actually the exterior wall of the monastery's church. Some passageways were cut into it, one of which had a small chapel. And now it's part of the school, although at least they've put up a fence to block it off.

The squared stones, the layers of
red bricks, the cement - definitely
a Roman wall.

I wonder if the kids appreciate what they're looking at everyday, or if it's just another wall to them? One day the kids from this school also took a field trip to the medieval cathedral, just down the street. When I was a kid, maybe we would go to a reconstructed native site, or visit a 19th-century pioneer village...

I found that my French colleagues, even the fellow medievalists, generally were not very excited about ancient and medieval stuff, since there are ruins like this almost everywhere. There are much more impressive Roman walls not far away, in Le Mans for example. But they would humour me when I would go on and on about how great Nantes' wall was.

I thought that would be the only chance I would have to see it, but months later I was able to go inside the courtyard again. Near the end of the summer holidays, I guess they were getting ready for the new school year (the "rentrée" as they say in France) and the gate was left open. No one seemed to be around, so I wandered inside, and spent more time taking better close-up pictures.


Eventually someone in charge noticed I was there and wondered who I was and what I was doing. When he heard my accent, he wanted to practice his English (which seemed to be limited to the words "Roman" and "three"). He was just as excited that an English-speaking person had managed to find the wall as I was that it was still there.

That was the last time I visited the school, but in the meantime I had discovered many other remnants scattered throughout the Roman and medieval limits of the city.

A passage was cut into the wall
in the Middle Ages.

The interior side of wall, through a hole in the non-Roman
wall on Rue des Cordeliers.

 

The Château des ducs de Bretagne

Location: 47° 12′ 56″ N, 1° 32′ 59″ W

I'll have more to say about the castle later, but the earliest parts of the castle were built on top of the Roman wall in the thirteenth century. There is still a small section in the bottom of the castle, in the lowest level of the history museum.

These remnants are pretty deteriorated, and this is also probably the interior side, which did not have to look as ornate as the exterior side. You can see the obvious Roman elements though, especially the small square stones and the layers of thinner red bricks.

There are some more Roman artefacts in the museum, including the inscription at the top of this page, but for the most part it deals with Nantes' more recent history, especially the 18th and 19th centuries when the city was the centre of the French slave trade. But it's free on the first Sunday of the month! (Except during the summer.)

Porte St-Pierre

Location: 47° 13′ 08″ N, 1° 33′ 01″ W

Porte St-Pierre is the only remaining gate of Nantes' medieval walls, which replaced the Roman wall starting in the 13th century. It's right beside the cathedral and there is a very long section of the medieval walls nearby, which are very interesting in their own right. But there is another bit of the Roman wall there, which is extremely easy to miss despite being right out in the open.

While researching more about the wall inside the school, I read that there was a small section between Porte St. Pierre and the cathedral. I had never noticed it before, so I assumed that if it was still there in the 19th century when these books were written, it may no longer exist.  

One day I passed by the Porte, as I had done a hundred times before, but this time I looked more carefully. Sure enough, what had always seemed to be an unremarkable bunch of rocks definitely was the Roman wall! If I hadn't specifically read that it was there I would never have noticed it. At the time, there were various signs pointing out the remnants of the medieval city, even a few right around here pointing out the cathedral and the medieval wall, but there was no sign or plaque or any other indication whatsoever that the Roman wall is right there too.

I assume the vast majority of people walking by there everyday had no idea it was there either. It was down in a ditch, below street level, and not very noticeable. In fact, while I was standing there wondering how I had never noticed it before, someone went down into the ditch to pee, right on the wall. That's not really uncommon in France...I saw someone peeing on the World War II monument once, among other things. But still, I bet this was the oldest thing that guy ever peed on.

Interior side.

Exterior side.

It was in a ditch because this section is actually the part that was underground when the wall was still standing. When the medieval walls were built, in this part of the city they ran alongside, or were built into or top of, the Roman wall, as was the Porte. The stones and bricks are noticeably Roman, but they're more weathered than the section in the school. There used to be a little garden in the ditch too, so obviously the city looked after it, but it seemed bizarre that they didn't advertise it in any way.

The interior side of the wall was completely open and I could walk right up to it. The exterior side was less accessible. Through some stairs and a path in the Porte itself, I could also walk out onto the top of the wall, so I liked to sit there sometimes and just imagine I was back in the Middle Ages or the Roman era. I thought about jumping down into the ditch on the other side of the wall where the little gardens were, facing the exterior side of the wall, but I don't think I would have been able to get back out again. But while sitting there I noticed some other things, like the Roman stones that seem to be built into the medieval Porte, and a cemetery.

I had noticed some random broken stones in there long before, but I didn't think anything of them either. But now that I actually looked at them, they were obviously man-made, some of them were coffin-shaped, and some had crosses carved into them, so they were definitely sarcophagi. I figured the tombs probably dated from the later Middle Ages, along with the Porte, but I did some more reading and this was actually a 6th-century Merovingian cemetery. That's awesome. Apparently when the wall and the cemetery were excavated in 1906, there was even a skeleton down there.

A couple of weeks later (in August 2012), the stone with the cross carvings had broken off (or someone had broken it off). So if that much damage could happen in two weeks, how much more have these tombs been damaged in the previous hundred years? How much has the wall been damaged?

Same view, with the broken stone.

Roman elements built into the Porte.

Porte St-Pierre (update, 2014)

I went back to Nantes for a conference in October 2014, and of course I had to go see all the Roman sites again. But this part of the wall and the cemetery were much different. The city had, at least, put up a new sign explaining the various parts of the Roman and medieval walls that are visible here, but they have covered over the cemetery and seem to have done some other work around the Roman wall.

There is a new path going past the interior side, so you can't walk right up to it anymore, and you can't walk out on top of it from the Porte anymore. The trees around it have also been removed.

The exterior side no longer has a garden and trees around it, but I guess the work isn't done yet...looks like there should be grass there in the future, at least.

The biggest difference is the Merovingian cemetery. The whole thing has been covered over, and the sarcophagi that are visible are just copies of the original! But that is probably for the best, considering the damage I saw in 2012.

Cours St-Pierre

Location: 47° 13′ 03″ N, 1° 32′ 58″ W

Roman elements in the medieval wall
on Cours Saint-Pierre.

The largest remnants of the medieval wall are on Cours St-Pierre, heading towards the castle between the cathedral and Rue Prémion. Most of it is purely medieval, but looking closely, there is also a very small section that has been built into the Roman wall. I'm not sure why there are Roman bits here but nowhere else. I do know that the original wall was damaged in the 9th century when the Vikings invaded - among other things, they killed the bishop in the cathedral. So I can imagine they broke down the wall here and it lay in ruins until the medieval wall was built into it 400 years later.

Rue Bossuet

Location: 47° 13′ 02″ N, 1° 33′ 19″ W

My street, Rue Léon-Blum, connected to Rue St-Léonard, which used to be the northwestern edge of the Roman wall. There was a church there, and a Roman and then a medieval tower, which were all destroyed long ago to make room for the current Hôtel de ville. The wall ran south along Rue St-Léonard, and the current street and the other streets that connect to it still have, or used to have, remnants of the wall in various places.

On Rue Bossuet there are some timber-framed houses, some of the few surviving medieval houses in Nantes (the rest burned down, or were destroyed so they wouldn't burn down). They're private residences now so I couldn't go inside, but they were definitely built next to the Roman wall. Several metres away, there is a small parking lot or storage garage, where the remnants of a wall are visible through the gate. One day, the gate was open so I wandered inside and took some pictures. It's completely in ruins and covered by plants and trees, but it must be the interior face of the Roman wall. The medieval wall didn't extend this far south, it turned west and crossed the Erdre a bit further north.

Rue St-Léonard

So, the exterior side of the wall would most likely be visible in the shops along Rue St-Léonard and in Place du Change, as it was in the 19th century, unless those remnants have since been destroyed. I worked at the university, and I had a long conversation about this with a colleague there, Philippe Le Pichon, an historian and a member of the Société archéologique de Nantes. He confirmed that the bit on Rue Bossuet was certainly Roman, and that there are still vestiges visible along Rue St-Léonard, so I went looking for those too.

Unfortunately they are not just out in the street, which meant I had to go talk to people and try to explain what I was doing. The most likely spot, since it was on the other side of the wall on Rue Bossuet, was a Chinese restaurant, whose owners were often sitting outside on their patio. But they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about...and since none of us spoke French natively, I think we were all having a hard time understanding each other (they suggested I should bring a native-speaker friend next time, haha). They were nice though, they always remembered me when I walked by in the weeks afterward.

Next I talked to the owner of an Italian restaurant, who also happened to be standing outside. She understood me just fine, but she wasn't originally from Nantes and she didn't know anything about a Roman wall. She suggested I ask the tourist office, but because the city doesn't seem to have much interest in the Roman remains, I already knew they wouldn't know anything either.

Place du Change

Location: 47° 12′ 57″ N, 1° 33′ 18″ W

If I had lived in Nantes longer I might have eventually asked everyone in all the shops and restaurants along the street, but this was already way too embarrassing for me. I can't go up to random people like this in English, so it even more difficult in French. But there are probably remnants at Place du Change too. Rue St-Léonard turns into Rue des Carmes, which ends in Place du Change. The highlight of Place du Change is another medieval timber-framed house, which is also almost certainly built into the Roman wall. There is a café in there now though, and I could never get the nerve to go disturb people there when they always seemed so busy...maybe I would have if they had just been standing out on the street doing nothing like the other people I talked to.

From here, the wall would have continued south to the modern Place du Bouffay, and then turned east to follow the edge of the Loire, up to the site of the modern castle. But neither the Roman nor the medieval walls are visible there anymore.

That's it for the Roman wall, but there is one more Roman building in Nantes, the Chapelle St-Étienne, the subject of the next post.

Neolithic sites

Before I get to the ancient and medieval stuff, we have to go back several thousand years to the Neolithic, and we have to start off outside of Nantes, in some of the nearby towns.

Long before France was French, long before the Romans and even before the Celts, there were people living here who didn't leave any written records but left lots of evidence that they were there. I'm not an archaeologist, and I hardly know anything about prehistoric France, but it's an interesting period I wish I knew more about. Normally I get excited about ancient and medieval remains because we don't have anything like that in Canada. In this case though, it's similar to the archaeological sites I know of in southern Ontario. Essentially, there was a native population, which was then replaced/conquered by another population.

I don't know of any Neolithic sites in Nantes itself, but Brittany has hundreds of sites full of menhirs, dolmens, standing stones, etc. Nothing like Stonehenge in England, but they're the same idea, and probably made by the same or a similar culture. They're basically some large stones that were placed in specific spots by unknown people for unknown reasons. The really famous ones like the Carnac Stones were too far from Nantes for me to see, but I visited two other closer sites:

Menhir de la pierre blanche

Location: 47° 21′ 17″ N, 1° 19′ 04″ W To the east of Nantes, further up the Loire, is the little town of Oudon. I went there to see some medieval sites that I'll post about later, but while looking for things to visit, I found that there is a menhir there, just one single standing stone, the "pierre blanche." 

The stone is about 3 kilometres outside of Oudon itself, which I didn't realize when I added it to my list of things to see there. Three kilometres is not too far, but it's all uphill, and I'm not in the best of shape. At the moment it's in the middle of someone's vineyard, but you can walk right up to the stone. It's a big chunk of quartz, about 4 and a half metres high (about 14 feet). It's amazing to me that people just dragged this huge stone and set up in a field. Who were they? Why did they do that? Why here?

I don't know, but after walking all that way, I thought I should go right up to it and touch it and take several dozen pictures of it. It's weird but now I feel kind of connected to whomever it was who put it there.

As seen from the road.

A closeup.

Dolmen de la pierre couvretière

Location: 47° 22′ 07″ N, 1° 10′ 22″ W

This stone is located in Ancenis, also further up the Loire to the east of Nantes and just east of Oudon. This one isn't a menhir, a standing stone like the Pierre blanche; it's a dolmen, a stone to cover a tomb.

It used to be a typical Neolithic tomb, and this was the top stone, with several other stones below it forming the tomb itself. As you can see, the tomb has long since collapsed, and the dolmen has fallen over and sunk into the swamp. I guess the other stones are still there, below the water.

Fortunately this site is right inside the town of Ancenis so it was much easier to find. As with Oudon, I was in Ancenis to see some medieval sites, which I will also post about later.

Next: Roman sites in Nantes.

Introduction to Nantes

In 2011 and 2012 I was working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Nantes, France. Nantes is one of the biggest cities in France, in the northwest near the Atlantic coast. Until the French Revolution, it was part of Brittany, but it is now the capital of the Pays-de-la-Loire province and the Loire-Atlantique depatment. In Canada, where I'm from, it seems that most people have never heard of it. I didn't know anything about it either, except that it was where the Edict of Nantes was signed in the 16th century, temporarily granting religious freedom to French Protestants.

There are lots of interesting things to see and do in Nantes, and the city does advertise certain aspects, like the Jules Verne-inspired "Machines de l'Île", La Pommeraye shopping mall, La Cigale restaurant, the "Voyage à Nantes" art exhibits, the 18th- and 19th-century architecture...but for the most part, the things that the city promoted are not very interesting to me. They're too modern! I'm a medieval historian, so I was always looking for older stuff. Fortunately, there are plenty of old things to see, if you know where to look. Most of it is very poorly-advertised, and largely in ruins. The castle and the cathedral are really the only preserved medieval sites, for example.

So, here is a look at the lesser-known historical sites in Nantes and the surrounding area. I'll try to keep things roughly chronological, from the oldest to the newest. It will also be more of a personal account than strictly history - the interesting stories (well, interesting to me) about how and why I found certain sites.

I should also note that there are lots of pictures, but I'm not a very good photographer. My camera is actually a JVC video camera that also takes pictures (and which I rarely ever used for videos). The pictures are relatively low resolution and low quality, and are all in an annoying rectangular shape. I tried to make some panoramas with Hugin to compensate for that (such as the panorama of the old city, above). When I went back to Nantes for a conference in 2014, I had a proper digital camera, but not much time to spend taking better pictures.

Here is a list of posts so far:

Some Neolithic sites in the towns outside Nantes
The Roman wall of Nantes
The Chapelle Saint-Étienne and the Basilique St-Donatien et St-Rogatien
The Église St-Similien
The Église St-Jacques
The medieval wall(s) of Nantes
Some medieval sites around Nantes - Oudon, Champtoceaux, and Ancenis
The Château des ducs de Bretagne.html
The Couvent des Cordeliers
Some other medieval buildings
Nantes Cathedral
The Atlantic slave trade in Nantes


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