Saint-Malo

 

(săN-mälō') , town (1990 pop. 49,274), Ille-et-Vilaine dept., NW France, on the English Channel. Built on a rocky promontory, Saint-Malo is a fishing port and one of the great tourist centers of Brittany. The major industries are deep-sea fishing, printing, machinery manufacturing, and boatbuilding. There is regular ferry service to the Channel Islands in the summer. A Welsh monk built a monastery nearby in the 6th cent., and in the 9th cent. refugees fleeing Norman raids on nearby Saint-Servan settled at the site of the present-day Saint-Malo. The town was made a part of France in 1491; it became a prosperous commercial seaport in the 1500s. Between the 17th and 19th cent., French corsairs operated out of Saint-Malo, despite repeated English efforts to destroy the port and corsair fleet. Saint-Malo is famous for its ramparts and its 17th-century architecture. Points of interest include the main gate to the city (15th cent.), a château (15th cent.) that is now a municipal museum, and an open-air aquarium. In World War II, German forces, retreating before the U.S. army, set the city ablaze. In 1966 a tidal-power station, harnessing the energy from the channel's high tides, was opened. The nearby towns of Saint-Servan and Paramé were annexed by Saint-Malo in 1967. The city was the birthplace of Jacques Cartier and François Chateaubriand, whose tomb is near the harbor.

Commune of Saint-Malo View of the walled city
Location
Coordinates	48° 38' 53" N 02° 00' 27" W
Administration
Country	France
Region	Bretagne
Department	Ille-et-Vilaine (sous-préfecture)
Arrondissement	Saint-Malo
Canton	Chief town of 2 cantons
Intercommunality	communauté d'agglomération du Pays de Saint-Malo
Mayor	René Couanau (Current)
Statistics
Altitude	0–51 (avg. 8)
Land area¹	36.58 km²
Population² (1999)	50,675
- Density	1,385/km² (1999)
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	35288/ 35400
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
2 Population sans doubles comptes: single count of residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel).

For the community, see Saint Malo, Louisiana

Saint-Malo (Sant-Maloù in Breton; Saent-Malô in Gallo) is a walled port city in Brittany in northwestern France on the English Channel. It is a sous-préfecture of the Ille-et-Vilaine département.

Saint-Malo has 50,000 inhabitants, but that number can increase to up to 200,000 in the summer tourist season. With the suburbs included, the population is about 135,000.

History

Saint-Malo during the Middle Ages was a fortified island at the mouth of the Rance River, controlling not only the estuary but the open sea beyond. The promontory fort of Aleth, south of the modern centre in what is now the Saint-Servan district, commanded approaches to the Rance even before the Romans, but modern Saint-Malo traces its origins to a monastic settlement founded by Saint Aaron and Saint Brendan early in the 6th century. Its name is derived from a man said to have been a follower of Brendan, Saint Malo.

Saint-Malo had a tradition of asserting its autonomy in dealings with the French authorities and even with the local Breton authorities. From 1590–1594, Saint-Malo declared itself to be an independent republic, taking the motto "not French, not Breton, but Malouins".

Saint-Malo became notorious as the home of the corsairs, French privateers and sometimes pirates. (In the nineteenth century the city's "piratical" notoriety was portrayed in Jean Richepin's play Le flibustier and in César Cui's like-named opera derived therefrom.) The corsairs of Saint-Malo not only forced English ships passing up the Channel to pay tribute, but also brought wealth from further afield. Jacques Cartier, who sailed the Saint Lawrence River and visited the sites of Quebec City and Montreal — and is thus credited as the discoverer of Canada, lived in and sailed from Saint-Malo, as did the first colonists to settle the Falklands – hence the islands' French name Îles Malouines, which gave rise to the Spanish name Islas Malvinas.

The commune of Saint-Servan was merged, together with Paramé, and became the commune of Saint-Malo in 1967.

Saint Malo was the site of an Anglo-French summit in 1998 which lead to a significant agreement regarding European defence policy. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac stated that "the [European] Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises".

Food

Saint-Malo has one of the highest concentration of sea food restaurants in Europe. It is famous for its local oysters from the nearby village of Cancale.

Sites of interest

Now inseparably attached to the mainland, Saint-Malo is the most visited place in Brittany. Sites of interest include:

• The top naturist beach on the English Channel
• The walled city (La Ville Intra-Muros)
• The château of Saint-Malo with The Solidor tower of Saint-Servan. It holds a collection from the museum of Saint-Malo on Cape Horn. Many scale models, nautical instruments and objects made by the sailors during their crossing or brought back from foreign ports invoke thoughts of travel aboard extraordinary tall ships at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.
• The tomb of the writer Chateaubriand on the Ile du Grand Bé
• The Cathedral of St. Vincent

Miscellaneous

Saint-Malo was the birthplace of:

• Jacques Cartier (1491-1557), explorer of Canada.
• Jacques Gouin de Beauchene (1652-1730), explorer of the Falkland Islands
• Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759), mathematician and astronomer
• Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais (1699-1753), sailor and administrator
• François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848), writer and diplomat
• Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne (1724-1772), explorer
• Robert Surcouf (1773-1827), sailor, trader, ship-owner and corsair
• Hughes Felicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854), priest, philosophical and political writer
• Louis Duchesne (1843-1922), historian, French academia.

Gallery

Old map of Saint-Malo	The "Fort National" visible from Saint-Malo	View up a typical city street towards the cathedral	View of the city from the walls
Cathedral window	The city wall of St Malo.	Commemoration of the Cartier expedition in the floor of the cathedral.

See also

• Saint-Servan
• Rothéneuf
• Mont-Saint-Michel
• Battle for Brest

External links

• St-Malo Tourism English guide to tourist attractions in Saint-Malo
• http://www.ville-saint-malo.fr/
• Visiting St-Malo - English
• http://jersey.typepad.com/st_malo
• St. Malo: Capital of the corsaires Images and information
• Lucadea.com - 112 photos of Saint-Malo
• Pictures from Saint Malonrm:Saint Mâlo

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