After a day of travel and driving from Dinan to Nantes – we slept about 20km outside of Nantes on a former campground by a lake, wonderfully beautiful – we explore Nantes today! There is a lot to see: The Château des ducs de Bretagne, a cultural trail across the city, the old town and the cathedral of Nantes.

Château des ducs de Bretagne

We haven’t visited a museum in a while, but here in Nantes we feel like visiting the Château des ducs de Bretagne. Already from the outside the sight of this castle is impressive. The moat that runs all the way around the castle is still filled with water. In the castle itself there is an exhibition, which impressively shows the history and the development of this castle over the centuries. The exhibition is beautifully and impressively designed and goes smoothly from the castle to the history of Nantes and the seafaring past of France. Finally, the role of France in the 20th century with the world wars is also presented. We were less interested in the war part of the exhibition, but in the rest of the museum we spent much more time than originally planned.
Oh yes, not only the exhibition we could look at: The museum is housed in the carefully prepared rooms of the castle, and we incidentally get a good impression of the interior life of this castle.

By the way, the inner courtyard of this castle, as well as the castle walls are open to the public and are just as impressive as the interiors. The castle can be circled on the castle wall and thus also leads into building areas that were not part of the museum tour. This castle impressed us – this visit was worthwhile.

Tue-Sun: 10am – 6pm, July and August open 7 days/week
Admission: 15Euro/adult, 5Euro/18-25 year-olds, children free of charge
ProTip: The whole museum is wheelchair accessible, making the Château des ducs de Bretagne one of the few castles that can be visited completely obstacle-free!

Le Voyage à Nantes – a green line of cultural hotspots

Directly at the Château des ducs de Bretagne, the green line of Nantes passes by. This line is a kind of tourist guide and passes by numerous cultural hotspots in Nantes. To walk the entire program of the line would take about 2 days. We only loosely adhere to it, at the moment we just happen to follow it to our next attraction, Nantes Cathedral. Unfortunately, Nantes Cathedral is closed for renovations when we visit in December. So, as an alternative program, we continue to take the green line under our feet, which leads us further through the old town of Nantes to the next church (how could it be otherwise with Mimi?), the Basilique Saint-Nicolas.
We think this green line is a really cool idea to explore the city.

Passage Pommeraye

The Passage Pommeraye is known for its special construction with metal struts and glass panes as a roof. In the middle of the passage, a long staircase leads up through the different levels of the passage. We are by far not the only tourists looking at the Passage Pommeraye on this day. Nevertheless, we are able to take some great photos. Adding to the already pompous appearance, the green metal struts are starkly contrasted by orange fir trees with artificial snow. The image is memorable, or kitschy. The stores on the various levels of the arcade hall still have the original look of the store windows and store signage. A beautiful thing!

Nantes – a thriving and bustling city

We let ourselves drift here from one place to the next, next to beautiful mansions from the 18th century (Rue Kervégan), great art installations on the Place Bouffay or the impressive entrance tower of the LU factory (known to us mainly by the TUC crackers), there are countless small coffees that invite you to linger and tiny as well as large stores that are a shopping paradise.

In the summer, you can take a wonderful walk along the banks of the Loire and if you want to experience even more, you can visit the exhibition project Les Machines de l’île on the Ile de Nantes. This exhibition features gigantic machines that remind us of the ideas of Jules Verne or Leonardo da Vinci.

Since the temperatures are fresh and it pulls us with our camper further south, we do not have the time to visit everything. However, Nantes is certainly worth another visit, next time perhaps in the summer with warmer temperatures.