The town, which promotes itself with the slogan ‘A city by the sea’, has 20 beaches along the coast to the west, towards Pornichet.
Saint-Nazaire, which was only developed as a major town in the middle of the 19th century and which was heavily bombed in the Second World War and had to be almost entirely re-developed, is sometimes described as the city that was built twice in less than a century. For that reason there are not too many historic buildings on view. But it does boast a couple of prehistoric monuments, the Tumulus of Dissignac (4,000 BC) and a megalithic stone formation of ‘dolmen’ near the city centre. There is also the Villès-Martin fort on the estuary itself, built in 1861 (sadly not usually open to visitors) and the Kerlédé lighthouse, which went out of service in 1961. There is also, of course, the massive but elegant Saint-Nazaire bridge, opened in 1975, which spans the mighty Loire Estuary over a distance of 3.3 kilometres.
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