Tourism Saint-Nazaire 2016 press kit

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Saint-Nazaire Tourisme & Patrimoine - BP 173 - 44613 SAINT-NAZAIRE cedex - France
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Table of contents
Impressions…
p. 4/5
A city by the sea
p. 6/7
Visitors’ attractions in Ville-Port
p. 8/9/10
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Escal’Atlantic, the Ocean Liner Experience
Guided tour of the STX shipyard
The submarine Espadon
The Airbus factory
The heritage museum Ecomusée
The harbour terminals of Nantes Saint-Nazaire Port
Two-hour cruises along the coast
And also (seasonal visits)
p. 8
p. 8
p. 9
p. 9
p. 9
p. 10
p. 10
p. 10
A destination for a week-end break or a holiday
p. 11
Practical information about the tours and visits
p. 12
Press contact
p. 12
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IMPRESSIONS…
A city by the sea, between the Loire estuary and the Atlantic Ocean…
Having a nice holiday, Monsieur Hulot?
Life is easy in the city centre.
The world music festival “Les Escales” is
one of the highlights of the year.
Spindly legs and huge nets:
Saint-Nazaire’s fishing cabins.
Even Tintin has already come to Saint-Nazaire!
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IMPRESSIONS…
A great play area directly on the beach.
The sea. That says it all…
The elegant ships built in Saint-Nazaire are the pride of a whole city.
Long walks on windy beaches: winter pleasure
in Saint-Nazaire
Saint-Nazaire’s Theatre successfully combines elements of
architecture from both the 19th and 21st century.
Stunning views for this cycle lane along the seafront.
The countryside takes over…
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A city by the sea
With its ideal location both on the Loire estuary and the Atlantic Ocean, Saint-Nazaire is quite
literally a city by the sea: not a seaside resort but a “real” city which is lively all year long and
which enjoys an outstanding geographical situation. The city is large enough to offer very different
atmospheres in its various parts… and the sea is never far away!
Seaside and coast
The city is wide open unto the ocean, and the seaside promenade is
the place to be. It attracts crowds strolling, cycling, rollerblading or
simply enjoying the sunshine on one of the over-dimensional wooden
benches. The lively skate-park is on the seafront, as is the peaceful
botanical garden Jardin des Plantes, surrounded by villas dating back to
the late 19th century. The typical fishing cabins and the coastal
footpath contribute to a very maritime atmosphere.
Fishing cabins along the seaside promenade.
City centre
Shops and boutiques, hotels and restaurants can be found in the city
centre with flowers and trees adding colour and shade. The
pedestrian areas around the shopping centres “Paquebot”, right in
the city centre, and “Ruban Bleu” near the docks, become every now
and then open-air stages for cultural events. The famous bicycle road
Loire à vélo passes along the seaside and through the city centre.
Sidewalk café in the city centre.
Ville-Port
“Ville-Port”, the intersection of the city and the harbour, is probably
where you can best feel Saint-Nazaire’s heart beat. Ships, docks and
locks, and also cultural venues such as the Theatre with its regular
programme of drama, music, dance; the “VIP” concert venue for
today’s music and modern sounds; LIFE and Grand Café for exhibitions
of contemporary art. Famous artists Felice Varini and Gilles Clément
created specific open-air works of art for the harbour site. And inside
the huge submarine base, there is a hidden gem: Escal’Atlantic (see
p.8).
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Detail of Felice Varini’s Triangles.
Saint-Marc-sur-Mer
Saint-Nazaire’s very own seaside resort with a huge beach for
perfect summer happiness! No wonder film maker Jacques Tati
chose Saint-Marc-sur-Mer as the location for his famous film “Mr
Hulot’s holidays”, in the early 1950’s. A little further on, the sandy
beaches give way to steep rugged cliffs, with breathtaking
panoramas best to be discovered from the coastal footpath.
The cliffs at Saint-Marc-sur-Mer.
Mean-Penhoët and the shipyard
Between the huge bridge that spans the Loire estuary and the
famous shipyard, this neighbourhood is almost a little town in itself,
with a very distinctive atmosphere.
View from the submarine base towards the
shipyard.
A green city
More than one third of Saint-Nazaire’s surface is “green”, with public
parks and gardens, countless private gardens and almost 2,500 acres
of agricultural and marshland being part of the Brière marshes.
Ponds and little lakes near L’Immaculée, a landscape park at Océanis
and a lovely wood at Porcé, canals and herons at Le Vivier, where the
Brière marshes take over…
Some of Saint-Nazaire’s countryside is
part of the Brière marshes.
The beaches
Saint-Nazaire is proud of its twenty beaches: sheltered little coves, family beaches begging for
sandcastles, and wide open beaches where surfing fans ride on the rolling waves. The five most
visited beaches are watched over by lifeguards during the summer, and two of them lend special
equipment to disabled holiday makers. Three beaches have been awarded the eco-label Pavillon Bleu
(“Blue Flag”).
Competitors at La Courance.
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Monsieur Hulot’s beach.
Visitors’ attractions : the Port where all
Journeys begin…
In Saint-Nazaire harbour, Visit Saint-Nazaire offers a unique range of visits and
experiences under the name Le Port de tous les Voyages. Come to the port
where all journeys begin….
Le Port de tous les Voyages (which means literally « the Port of all Journeys ») is
the name under which the public company Visit Saint-Nazaire presents its tours
and visits, all based in and around the harbour of Saint-Nazaire, which have
already welcomed more than 3.5 million visitors. All of them are really about
journeys of some kind.
Escal’Atlantic, the Ocean Liner Experience
Escal’Atlantic recounts voyages on ocean liners, visitors
walking in the footsteps of yesterday’s travelers. This unique
venue inside the submarine base is entirely dedicated to the
world of transatlantic liners. The 25 display areas of its
evocative setting are inspired by the interiors of ocean liners.
Multimedia features, documents and archive films tell their
story, whilst a unique collection of 200 ocean liner artefacts,
stemming from ships built in Saint-Nazaire between 1900 and
the 1960’s, bears witness to life on board the liners. More than
1.4 million visitors have already undertaken this exceptional
“journey”.
An outstanding visitor’s experience
for the whole family.
Guided tour of the STX shipyard
Visitors are taken on a fascinating tour through one of Europe’s
oldest and biggest shipyards, STX France, for close looks at
fabulous “travelling machines” being built. Shipbuilding has
been an ongoing activity in Saint-Nazaire for a century and a
half. Two ways of visiting the shipyard are on offer: a 2-hour
tour (“Chantiers navals”), a very complete insight into all
aspects of shipbuilding as well as marine renewable energies;
the 1 ½ hour-tour (“Géant des mers”), is themed about the
construction of the biggest cruise ships of the world, such as
Royal Caribbean International’s Harmony of the Seas.
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Visitors get close looks at the ships being built.
The submarine Espadon
Aboard the submarine Espadon, visitors might well experience
some of the feelings Jules Verne described in Twenty thousand
Leagues under the Sea. During its 25-year long career, this
submarine sailed the equivalent of 17 times the circumference of
the earth. The audio-guided tour offers captivating insight into
the life of the submariners, and gives the possibility to listen to
sounds which are not exactly part of everyday life, such as the
noise made by thousands of shrimps under water, or by an
iceberg breaking in two…
Space is rare aboard the submarine…
The Airbus factory
Travels on the sea, travels in the air: visiting the Airbus factory
means seeing a whole new side of planes. The huge site at the
outskirts of Saint-Nazaire is the second most important Airbus
plant in France. The tour takes visitors into the vast factory halls
and workshops, impressively well-lit and silent, where fuselage
sections of various Airbus planes including the A380, biggest
civilian aircraft, are being assembled and equipped.
Close encounter with the fuselage of an A380.
Heritage museum Ecomusée
The museum’s visitors travel through time; collections,
documents and scale models bear witness to the city’s
fascinating history. They tell the story of how the
harbour was created in the middle of the 19th century and how
its activities developed spectacularly. Saint-Nazaire’s
shipbuilding and aeronautical industry is represented with scale
models of ocean liners and the first seaplanes, built here in the
1920’s and 30’s. Visitors also discover pre-war Saint-Nazaire,
and how the heavily bombed town was entirely rebuilt in the
1950’s and 60’s.
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Scale model of the first oceangoing vessel built
in Saint-Nazaire, the
Impératrice Eugénie (1865).
The harbour terminals of Nantes Saint-Nazaire Port
This “journey” along the estuary of the river Loire shows how
thousands of ships link Saint-Nazaire to harbours all over the
world. Nantes Saint-Nazaire Port is the most important port on the
French Atlantic coast. Visitors discover a series of impressive
terminals along the Loire estuary: containers, LNG, agri-bulk…
These terminals are important platforms for the regional economy.
Impressive terminals dot the banks of the Loire.
2-hour cruises along the coast
During the summer, the 2-hour boat trip, a real journey between
the Loire estuary and the Atlantic ocean, is definitely a must!
During the cruise “Saint-Nazaire by the sea”, the ship sails along
the beaches, cliffs and coves of a largely unspoilt, wooded coast,
before heading upstream along the shipyard and the huge
harbour terminals and underneath the elegant Loire bridge. As to
the “Côte d’Amour” or “Love Coast” cruise, it sails along the shore
until the bay of La Baule, offering outstanding panoramic sights on
the way.
2-hour cruises, discovering Saint-Nazaire
from the sea.
And also…
Specific guided or themed tours are also on offer during July and
August. The neolithic barrow of Dissignac, or tumulus, is a
megalithic tomb with two burial chambers, in the Dissignac area
on the outskirts of Saint-Nazaire. It was built approx. 6,000 years
ago and is considered one of the most remarkable prehistoric
monuments of the whole region. - With its 301 metre-long
façade, the submarine base, built by the German army during
World War 2, dominates the harbour site. Guided tour about its
history and how, in the 1990’s, the City of Saint-Nazaire
developed Ville-Port, a town planning project which turned the
former fortress into a link between the town and its harbour.
The neolithic barrow of Dissignac.
Three tours have been awarded the national quality mark Qualité Tourisme: Escal’Atlantic,
the guided tour of the Airbus factory and the guided tour of the harbour terminals.
See page 12 for practical information about the tours and visits.
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A destination for a weekend break or a
holiday
Saint-Nazaire is very easy to get to
By train: Saint-Nazaire’s railway station is served by the TGV high-speed train (2 hrs 45 from
Paris).
By plane: the Nantes Atlantique international airport is approximately one hour’s drive from
Saint-Nazaire.
By car: motorways and dual carriageways link Saint-Nazaire to all regions of France, Paris
(440 km) and the main Channel ferry ports. Popular seaside resorts such as La Baule (15 km)
or Pornic (30 km) are nearby.
Getting around
Driving and parking is easy in Saint-Nazaire. Car parks are either free or not expensive at all. Public
transport: the local STRAN busses stop all over town and at the beaches. Good to know: the day
ticket Métrocéane combines regional train TER between Saint-Nazaire and Nantes, Le Croisic or La
Baule and public transport in these towns.
Tourist accommodation
Saint-Nazaire has more than 1.000 beds on offer (hotels, bed & breakfast, apartment hotels…), and a
huge campsite by the sea. Motorhome stopovers have been created in various parts of Saint-Nazaire.
Restaurants and cafés of all kinds can be found everywhere in Saint-Nazaire.
Sidewalk café on the seaside promenade.
Information is provided at the Tourist Information Centre inside the submarine base (free WiFi
access). Phone 00 33 240 22 40 65; contact@saint-nazaire-tourisme.com.
The English website www.visit-saint-nazaire.com is also a well of information. It gives direct access to
the availability of tourist accommodation.
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Practical information about the tours and
visits
Prices
Full price for each visit is 13 €, except: 4 € for the heritage museum Ecomusée; 6 € for
seasonal visits; 9 € for the submarine; 20 € for the 2-hour cruise.
Children under 4 are free; between ages 4 and 14 years they pay half price.
Reduced price (-10%) for students, unemployed, disabled persons. For information call 00
33 228 540 640.
Some visits can be combined: the package Escal’Atlantic + submarine + Ecomusée costs 20 €
full price, as does the package Escal’Atlantic + shipyard tour “Géant des mers”.
Booking
No booking required for Escal’Atlantic, the submarine Espadon and the Ecomusée (except for
groups of 20+).
The guided tours of the shipyard, the Airbus factory and the harbour terminals, as well as the
2-hour cruise have to be booked beforehand (by phone, 00 33 228 540 640). Passport
compulsory for the industrial tours.
All details about the tours and visits: www.visit-saint-nazaire.com > Things to see > Plan your visit.
Press contact
Andrea KLOSE, Visit Saint-Nazaire
Phone 00 33 228 540 805 / 00 33 689 882 905
klosea@saint-nazaire-tourisme.com
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