Saint-Malo Audio Tours

Saint-Malo declared itself an independent republic from 1590 to 1594, answering to no king and flying its own flag. The motto it adopted has stuck: Ni francais, ni breton, malouin suis, 'neither French nor Breton, I am Malouin.' That self-contained defiance makes more sense once you're inside the granite walls and see the city's relationship to the sea: this is a place that organized itself around being ungovernable, that sent corsairs out to extort the English Channel and explorers to plant flags in Canada. Jacques Cartier, born here in 1491, sailed from this harbor to the mouth of the St Lawrence River and called it New France. The Falkland Islands were named Islas Malvinas by Spain because it was Malouin sailors who first settled them.

Most of what you walk through today was rebuilt.

American bombing and artillery in August and September 1944 destroyed about eighty percent of the walled city. The reconstruction, completed by 1960, followed the medieval street plan so closely that most visitors never realize the stone is 70 years old rather than 500. The rampart walk, which circles the entire intra-muros city, is one of the great urban walks in France: the sea visible on three sides, the islands of Grand Be and Petit Be accessible at low tide, and the particular quality of Breton Atlantic light that makes the granite walls shift between silver and gold depending on the hour.