photo sharing and upload picture albums photo forums search pictures popular photos photography help login
Kazuo Lim Khee Boon | profile | all galleries >> My Travel Album >> France >> Bretagne tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

île de France | Alsace | Aquitaine | Auvergne | Basse Normandie | Bourgogne | Bretagne | Centre | Champagne Ardenne | Corse | Franche Comté | Haute Normandie | Languedoc Roussillon | Limousin | Lorraine | Midi Pyrénées | Nord Pas de Calais | Pays de la Loire | Picardie | Poitou Charentes | Provence Alpes Côte d'Azur | Rhône Alpes

Bretagne

Bretagne (Brittany)




CapitalRennes

Brittany or Bretagne in French is one of the 26 regions of France. It occupies a large peninsula in the northwest of the country, lying between the English Channel to the north and the Bay of Biscay to the south. Its capital is Rennes.

The region of Brittany is made up of 80% of the former duchy and province of Brittany. The remaining 20% of Brittany is the Loire-Atlantique department which lies inside the Pays de la Loire region, with its capital Nantes, which was the historical capital of the duchy of Brittany.

Part of the reason that Brittany was split between two modern day regions was to avoid the rivalry between Rennes and Nantes. Although Nantes had been the main capital of the duchy of Brittany until the 16th century, Rennes had been the seat of the supreme court of justice of Brittany between 1560 and 1789. Rennes had also been the administrative capital of the Intendant of Brittany between 1689 and 1789. Intendances were the most important administrative units of the kingdom of France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. As for the provincial states of Brittany, which originally met every two years in a different city of Brittany, they had only met in Rennes from 1728 to 1789 (with only the exceptions of 1730, 1758, and 1760). Despite that, the "Chambre des comptes" stayed in Nantes until 1789. Note that Vannes (Gwened in Breton) used to be the first administrative capital of the duchy from 1381 till the end of the fifteenth century, keeping the seat of the "Chambre des comptes" till 1491/99, and the one of the "Parlement" till 1553, and between 1675 and 1689.

Thus, when French regions were created, it was decided in 1941 (when the majority of France was under Nazi German occupation, and the remainder under the puppet Vichy regime) to create a region of Brittany with Rennes as its capital, and another region created specifically for Nantes, which was called Pays de la Loire (i.e. "lands of the Loire"). Pays de la Loire is made up of a part of Brittany, but also several other historical provinces (Anjou, Maine, and so on).

People in Brittany and Nantes complain about the current division of Brittany and would like to see Loire-Atlantique joining the region of Brittany in order to reunify Brittany. However, reunification raises a couple of questions: first, what to do with the rump Pays de la Loire region, and second, which city should be chosen as the capital of this reunified Brittany region.

Bretagne.JPG
Bretagne.JPG