Things to do in Nantes

Culture · Île de Nantes

A workshop building enormous mechanical animals in the old shipyards, including a twelve-metre elephant that carries passengers.

Local tip: Book the elephant ride in advance in summer or you will not get on. The workshop gallery ticket is cheaper, quieter and arguably better — you watch the machines being built and tested.

Landmark · City centre

The moated ducal castle in the middle of the city, with a free-to-walk rampart circuit and a genuinely good city history museum inside.

Local tip: The courtyard and the ramparts are free and open late — a lap of the walls at dusk is one of the better free things in any French city. The museum's rooms on Nantes and the slave trade are unflinching and worth the ticket.

Landmark · City centre

A three-level nineteenth-century glass-roofed shopping arcade built into a hillside, connected by a monumental staircase.

Local tip: Go on a weekday morning when it is empty and the light comes through the roof properly. Most people photograph it from the bottom of the stairs; the view down from the top level is better.

Neighborhood · Rezé, across the Loire

A former fishing and river-pilot village of brightly painted houses and tangled lanes, directly opposite the city.

Local tip: Take the Navibus river shuttle rather than driving — it is on the ordinary transport ticket, it takes ten minutes and it is the correct way to arrive. Go at the end of the afternoon and eat on the quay.

Nature · North of the centre

The river François I is said to have called the most beautiful in France, running out of the city past châteaux, boathouses and towpaths.

Local tip: The towpath from Nantes toward Sucé-sur-Erdre is flat, shaded and largely empty on a weekday — an hour on a bike gets you properly out of the city. Rowing and canoe clubs along it take beginners.

Nature · Along the Loire, west of the city

A permanent trail of large-scale artworks planted along sixty kilometres of the Loire estuary between Nantes and the sea.

Local tip: Most visitors see the two or three pieces on the Île de Nantes and stop. The works further downstream — the half-submerged house at Couëron, the ones in the marshes — are free, almost unvisited, and the reason the trail exists. Take a car or the train and give it a full day.