Car Hire in Nantes, France
Nantes, the former capital of Brittany, is no longer officially part of the province: it was eventually moved to the Pays de la Loire in 1962 when the modern administrative regions were established. Nonetheless, such bureaucracy isn't attained too seriously in a city whose history is so thoroughly restricted up with Breton fortunes, and whose people consider it to be an inclusive part of the province. An intensive medieval centre, it later established great wealth from colonial expeditions, the slave trade and shipbuilding - activities sequentially overtaken by more recent industrial growth. Although a lot of the former provincial character of the city has been lost, thanks to such contemporary accretions as being the tower blocks masking the Loire and motorways tearing past the city, it stays to its residents a fundamental part of Brittany.
The Loire, the cause of Nantes' riches, has dwindled from the centre. As recently as the 1930s, the river crossed the city in seven different channels, but German labour as part of reparations for World War I filled in five. What are still referred to as "islands" in the centre are currently surrounded and isolated, not by water, but by hectic dual carriageways. These aren't simple to cross, however, they do at least imply that Nantes is divided into a series of discernible districts: the older medieval city is concentrated all over the cathedral, with the château featured in its southeast corner, and also the elegant nineteenth-century town lies to west, through the cours des 50-Otages.
Ljaon/jan/1v21
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