Château des Ducs de Bretagne

The Château des ducs de Bretagne is an enormous walled castle in the heart of Nantes, the former residence of the Dukes of Brittany and later a royal palace. The castle has been restored with considerable care — the ramparts can be walked for free, while the courtyard and the Musée d'Histoire de Nantes inside require a ticket. The museum covers the city's history with particular honesty about the transatlantic slave trade, which made 18th-century Nantes the wealthiest port in France.

The museum's treatment of Nantes' role in the slave trade is one of the most serious and candid in France: the city fitted out about 1,800 slaving voyages between 1707 and 1793, carrying roughly 550,000 enslaved Africans. The memorial room is sobering, and the museum does not flinch from the numbers or the human cost.

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A story
It was in the Château des ducs de Bretagne in 1598 that Henri IV signed the Edict of Nantes, which granted French Protestants substantial rights and ended nearly four decades of religious civil war. The edict was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685, triggering a mass exodus of Huguenots from France — but the document signed in Nantes had held for 87 years.