Couvent des Cordeliers

Ruins of the church at the Couvent

des Cordeliers (western wall of
the nave, with the old entrance
bricked over).

Sometimes a French town still looks "medieval", like Guérande for example, a town to the west of Nantes. There, the medieval walls are still intact, the old streets still exist, and there are lots of medieval buildings among the modern ones. Walking around the town, you can easily imagine what it would have looked like in the Middle Ages. Unfortunately this is not true for Nantes, which looks more like an 18th- and 19th-century city. The city was extremely wealthy then because of its position in the trans-Atlantic trade routes (i.e. they traded a lot of slaves), and that is when most of its biggest monuments were built. It was also heavily bombed during World War II, so there are a lot of modern buildings among the older ones.

As a result, it's hard to see how Nantes would have looked in the Middle Ages. Aside from the castle and the cathedral, there are a few narrow streets and tall wooden medieval houses around Place du Bouffay. Otherwise, the few other sites are in ruins, and the ruins aren't always immediately obvious as remnants of the medieval city. The city used to be full of churches, chapels, and monasteries, so many that it's hard to imagine how anything else could have fit inside the walls. There were two monasteries in particular that still partially exist, the Franciscan (the Couvent des Cordeliers) and the Dominican (the Hostellerie des Jacobins). They are also good examples of Nantes' current urban growth, since both sites have been re-used for other purposes, especially as apartments for the city's increasing population. In both cases, new construction has caused controversy for people who want to preserve Nantes' medieval heritage.

Couvent des Cordeliers

Location: 47° 13′ 09″ N, 1° 33′ 10″ W

Part of the wall at the corner of
rue des Cordeliers and rue
Saint-Jean. This was one of the
columns separating the two naves.
You can see the white tufa stone,
also used in many other medieval
buildings in Nantes and elsewhere
throughout the Loire Valley.

I've mentioned the Couvent des Cordeliers before, since it's also the location of the largest surviving piece of the Roman wall.

In the early 13th century when the medieval walls of Nantes were built, the old Roman wall became obsolete. The Couvent des Cordeliers was built shortly afterwards, in the space between the old and new walls at the northern edge of the old city. The Franciscans ("Cordeliers" in French) were the most powerful religious order in Nantes, and their monastery was extremely important in the history of the city. I worked at the university, which is now located in the far north of the modern city, but the original university was founded in the 15th century and was housed in the Couvent des Cordeliers. The parliament of the Duchy of Brittany also met there, and the treasury of the duchy was located there until a new building was constructed nearby (the site of the current Préfecture building).

The monastery extended over the area that is now Rue du Refuge, Rue d'Aguesseau, Rue des Pénitentes, Rue des Cordeliers, the École Saint-Pierre elementary school, Place Roger-Salengro, and the buildings of the Préfecture of the Loire-Atlantique département. Most of the monastery was torn down to make room for all these buildings and streets in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The modern wall along rue des Cordeliers. You can still
see the columns that used to separate the two naves.

The monastery had an unusual church with two naves. The nave is the long part of a church (or at least of a medieval church) leading from the entrance to the altar, and most churches have only one. The northern nave was built along the Roman wall, and was separated from the southern nave by a series of columns. The columns are still visible along the modern Rue des Cordeliers. The street itself is where the southern nave used to be. When that street was constructed in the 19th century, the columns separating the naves were filled in with stones and other debris, forming the odd-looking wall along the north side of the street.

Two of the remaining chapels.
The new building at the bottom
left is where the destroyed
chapel used to be.

On the south side of the Rue des Cordeliers are the "Spanish chapels", built in the 16th century by a family of wealthy Spanish merchants who lived in Nantes. At the moment, it's hard to tell that they used to be chapels, or anything at all. While I was living in Nantes, it just looked like a construction site, which caused a  controversy in 2011 in 2012. One of the chapels was destroyed entirely to make way for a new apartment building. Similar construction was happening at other medieval sites in the city, which led to the creation of the citizens' group called Forum Nantes Patrimoine to lobby the city to stop construction. They couldn't stop it entirely, but the exteriors of the other chapels were preserved - although the interiors were destroyed and apartments were built inside of them.

I usually walked down Rue des Cordeliers on my way to work and back, and I knew there was something unusual about the buildings there, but I didn't know exactly what it was. Coincidentally, in November 2011, the Nantes Patrimoine group hosted a lecture at the university building where I worked, so I learned all about the monastery, the Roman wall, and other threatened heritage buildings in the city. This is one of the things that sparked my interest in visiting all these sites and taking pictures of them.

An arch from one of the chapels.
The arch was covered in long ago,
but during construction in 2011,
windows were cut into it - one of
the major complaints of the
Forum Nantes Patrimoine.

One of the monastery/church
buildings along Rue du Refuge.

One of the monastery/church buildings, as seen from
the playground of the École Saint-Pierre.

Inside one of the derelict buildings on Rue du Refuge.

Hostellerie des Jacobins

Location: 47° 12′ 55″ N, 1° 33′ 05″ W 

The other site where similar construction was happening is the Hostellerie des Jacobins. The Dominicans, or Jacobins in French, had their monastery further to the south, in the Bouffay quarter near the castle and the modern Place des Jacobins. It was mostly destroyed long ago, especially when Rue Strasbourg was built in the 19th century; Rue Strasbourg is a wide boulevard that also cut through several other medieval sites when it was built. The only remaining part of the monastery was the "hostellerie", and apartments were built over it in 2010, before I lived in Nantes. During the construction, pieces of the Roman and medieval walls were discovered in the foundations of the building, but they have since been reburied again under the new apartments. I went looking for this monastery too before I realized what had happened to it, and there is almost no indication that it had been there at all, except for the remnants of a medieval doorway, and a reconstructed wooden medieval-esque design.

Medieval-style wooden design
on top of the apartments on the
former site of the Hostellerie
des Jacobins.

Remnants of a medieval door at
the Hostellerie, built into the
new building.

More remnants of the Hostellerie
within the new building.

As a medieval historian it's easy to be disappointed that the city doesn't seem to care very much about its medieval ruins. But from the perspective of the city, these are sites that have been in ruins for centuries, and they are getting in the way of the city's growth. When the Roman and medieval walls were in the way hundreds of years ago, they were knocked down too. The French Revolution destroyed many other buildings, and new ones were built on top of them. Why should the city leave large chunks of land in the downtown core just sitting there in ruins? They are unused space that could house new apartments or businesses and ultimately bring in revenue for the city. Those of us who hope that old and interesting buildings can be preserved are unfortunately in the minority, but I can understand why.