Saint-Malo

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Administration
Commune of Saint-Malo Image:Saintmalo.jpg View of the walled city
Location
Longitude	02° 00' 27" W
Latitude	48° 38' 53" N
Country	France
Région	Bretagne
Département	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 (1999)	1,385/km²
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).
Image:Flag of France.svg

For the saint, see Saint Malo (saint).

Saint-Malo is a walled port city in Brittany in northern 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, the population is about 135,000.

1 History
2 Sites of interest
3 Miscellaneous
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] 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.

In the later centuries it became notorious as the home of a fierce breed of pirate-mariners, who were never quite under anyone's control but their own; for four years from 1590, Saint-Malo even declared itself to be an independent republic, taking up the motto "not French, not Breton, but Malois". 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 St Lawrence river and visited the sites of Quebec City and Montréal - 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' Argentinian name, Islas Malvinas, from the French Îles Malouines.

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 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".

[edit] Sites of interest

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

The top optional 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 shelters a collection of the museum of Saint-Malo on Cape Horn. Many reduced models, nautical instruments and objects made by the sailors during their crossing or brought back from far away stops shall make the visitors dream in these travels 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 de Grand Bé
The Cathedral of St. Vincent