Nantes Audio Tours

Nantes made its fortune in the 18th century from the slave trade, was for centuries the capital of the Duchy of Brittany, and gave the world Jules Verne, who was born here in 1828 on the Ile Feydeau, a former island in the Loire estuary now embedded in the city fabric. All three of these facts shape how the city sees itself, and all three are addressed with unusual directness. The city officially recognised its slave trade history in 2012 with the Mémorial de l'Abolition de l'Esclavage on the quayside, one of the few such memorials in Europe that does not minimise what it commemorates.

The Île de Nantes, a former industrial island in the Loire on which shipyards operated for over a century, is now the most ambitious urban regeneration project in western France.

The Royal de Luxe street theatre company is based here, as is the Machines de l'Ile, one of the most peculiar and compelling attractions in France: enormous mechanical animals inspired by Jules Verne and Leonardo da Vinci, built to be ridden and walked through by visitors. The 12-metre mechanical elephant, powered by steam and operated by a crew of three, carries forty passengers through the island's streets on timed rides.