Page 61 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Brittany

BRIT T AN Y REGION B Y REGION  59

ILLE-ET-VILAINE

In the north, the Côte d’Émeraude and Mont-St-Michel face
onto the English Channel. Further south, at the confluence
of the Ille and the Vilaine rivers, lies Rennes, the regional
capital, which is famous for its elegant parliament building.
To the east, the proud fortresses of the Breton marches, which once
protected the duchy of Brittany, face neighbouring Normandy.

The beaches of the Côte d’Émeraude are centuries. In the towns, a prosperous
lined by a succession of resorts. But well and influential middle class developed;
before this part of Brittany was discovered the medieval houses in Vitré and Dol, as
by tourists, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul well as the town houses in Rennes, are
Signac and other artists had already been proof of this opulence. As acts of piety,
struck by its beauty when they came to trades men’s guilds commissioned the
paint in St-Briac. artists of Laval to create rich altarpieces.
Whether they are drawn to the From Celtic mythology to French
megalithic Roche-aux-Fées or to the Romanticism, the département of the
fortified castle in Fougères, lovers of Ille-et-Vilaine also has two emblems of
ancient monuments will be spoiled for Breton literary heritage: one is the the
choice. On the coast, Mont-St-Michel Forêt de Paimpont, the legendary Forêt
stands as a jewel of Gothic reli gious de Brocéliande where Merlin fell under
architecture, while the citadel in St-Malo the spell of the fairy Vivian; the other is
encloses within its ramparts several luxury the lugubrious Château de Combourg,
hotels. Inland, noble men built a multitude haunted by the ghost of the 19th-century
of manor houses, symbols of social writer and statesman the Vicomte
standing, during the 16th and 17th de Chateaubriand.

Slender stone columns that form the cloisters of Mont-St-Michel Abbey
View of the waterfront town of Cancale, the oyster capital of Brittany

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