La Rochelle, Charente-Maritimes, Nouvelle-Aquitaine: Five Special Spots

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As I selected my 5 peculiar spots successful La Rochelle, it struck maine however steeped successful past they each were. Of course, each French cities boast a affluent history, but could immoderate beryllium much historical than others?

I recovered specified a transportation betwixt the past and the present: though each tract bears witnesser to history, contiguous these are the places wherever Rochelais shop, reflect, sip, and worship.

1. Le Marché Central

“Make definite to sojourn [insert French municipality name] connected marketplace day” is specified a predominant injunction that I find it a cliché. But nary request for it present — successful La Rochelle, each time is marketplace day, acknowledgment to Le Marché Central.

Built successful 1834 and expanded successful 1893, it was designed by the authoritative municipal designer Antoine Brossard.

As you tin see, the operation is getting a spot agelong successful the bony — for this precise reason, 1 instantly falls successful emotion with it.

Having visited sleeker halles, I near reasoning however delightful this vintage-style covered marketplace was, and hoping the metropolis wouldn’t beryllium revamping it anytime soon. But I learned, with a tinge of sadness, that renovations could beryllium afoot, with the extremity of “redynamizing” and “requalifying” it – immoderate requalifier even means for a nutrient market.

2. Clarisse

Clarisse stands facing the bay, nursing a pudgy-faced baby. An emaciated toddler stands below, tugging astatine her raggedy ankle-length dress. Her look reflects fatigue and heavy resignation: she knows she has nary prime but to usage her beverage to nourish the healthier child, adjacent arsenic her lad suffers.

Inaugurated connected May 10^th 2024 by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, Clarisse, Nourrice Esclave – Clarisse, the Wet Nurse Slave – is the authoritative sanction of the bronze statue that forms the centerpiece of a discreet commemorative quadrate that serves arsenic a memorial to La Rochelle’s important relation successful the enslaved trade, euphemistically known arsenic “triangular trade”, betwixt Europe, Africa and the Americas.

Given this important and inglorious epoch of La Rochelle’s history, I felt it was incumbent connected maine to see this moving memorial, sculpted successful Bordeaux by the Haitian creator Woodly Caymitte (Filipo) and a squad of artisans.

3. Les Arcades

Formerly known arsenic Les Arceaux, virtually “the hoops,” the city’s arcades support galore of La Rochelle’s downtown shops from the elements – arsenic they person for centuries.

In the Middle Ages, merchants built woody pillars and makeshift roofs to screen their wares. Little by little, wood was replaced by stone, and arsenic commercialized enriched La Rochelle, due buildings went up.

In bid to payment from the structure provided, merchants paid an other taxation – but the accrued concern from protected retail abstraction was nary uncertainty worthy it, fixed cipher had umbrellas then.

They are magnificently illuminated astatine night, and marque a splendid location for Le Café de la Paix, a Rochelais institution:

Traces of shops past are disposable connected a fewer outer façades, and near maine wondering astir however circumstantial emplacements person evolved from the Middle Ages until our era.

4. A Protestant church, for once

In French, Protestant churches are called “temples”, and fewer are well-known tourer sites.

But La Rochelle was a notable Protestant stronghold, and metropolis leaders got the agleam thought of declaring independency from France successful 1621, sometimes going truthful acold arsenic to telephone the metropolis the “New Republic of La Rochelle”.

Unsurprisingly, this was not to the liking of King Louis XIII. Fearing a caller La Rochelle-England-Holland axis of power, helium ordered Cardinal Richelieu to starve the Huguenot rats out, starring to the Siege of La Rochelle (1627-1628), a celebrated and infamous play of French history. Some women and children were evacuated during the siege, not to past for long. Rochelais who stayed down were successful for decease by unwellness oregon starvation, arsenic French naval forces blocked each entree to the city. In the end, lone 5,400 of the city’s 28,000 inhabitants survived.

The occurrence lives connected contiguous successful the city’s motto, La Rochelle, Belle et Rebelle.

The city’s main Protestant church, le Temple des Recollets, is located adjacent the Old Port area. Suitably austere, it is besides a large spot to get distant from the waterfront hubbub.

5. Le quartier des Gabuts

Across from the tourist-drenched and precise French-style Vieux Port, 1 tin rapidly beryllium transported to a colorful, modern ambiance – and possibly wonderment why.

Welcome to the Gabuts neighborhood. Formerly a buzzing concern larboard area, this broadside of La Rochelle fell into abandonment successful the 1980s. But the metropolis chose to reinvent it, taking inspiration from Scandinavian colors and modern architecture. This “new” vicinity features shops and restaurants, arsenic good arsenic bureau buildings.

However, not each of the country was renovated; visitors tin besides get a glimpse of larboard manufacture buildings near standing, wherever thoroughfare creation has been allowed to flourish.

For a deeper dive into La Rochelle, location to astir 80,000 Rochelais and Rochelaises, you tin find the pursuing posts connected my Substack publication, France successful Between.

La Rochelle: France’s second-biggest enslaved commercialized port
La Rochelle, Belle et Rebelle
La Rochelle Blues