Saint-Malo

Gauls settled here in the 1st century BC, and the Roman town of Reginca or Aletum stood on the Aleth peninsula, where by the late 4th century a fort of the Saxon Shore guarded the Rance against raiders. Early in the 6th century a monastic settlement was founded by Saint Aaron and Saint Brendan; the town is named after Malo, or Maclou, a follower of Brendan who had come from what is now Wales. In the Middle Ages the town grew on a granite island off the coast, and in the mid-12th century its cathedral took over the bishop's seat from Aleth. A road and stonework were first laid along the Sillon, the sand spit to the mainland, in 1509.

The Malouins had a habit of independence: from 1590 to 1594 the town ran itself as a republic, and its motto still declares its people neither French nor Breton but Malouin. Jacques Cartier sailed from here to the St Lawrence, and Saint-Malo became notorious as the home of the corsairs, privateers who made English ships pay tribute; René Duguay-Trouin took Rio de Janeiro in 1711 and Robert Surcouf raided British shipping. In 1764 Bougainville named the Falklands the Îles Malouines after the town's settlers, the origin of the Spanish Malvinas.

In August 1944 the walled city was almost totally destroyed by American shelling and bombing while its German commander refused to surrender; the citadel held out until 17 August and the island of Cézembre until 2 September. The old town was rebuilt between 1948 and 1960, and in 1967 Saint-Servan and Paramé were merged into the commune.

Saint-Malo's identity is maritime and stubborn. Its sea captains, explorers and corsairs are commemorated in street names, museums and the shipowners' houses inside the walls, and the town also has names in Gallo, Saent-Malô, and Breton, Sant-Maloù. François-René de Chateaubriand, born here in 1768, described the town of his childhood in his Memoirs from Beyond the Grave and chose to be buried on the Grand Bé, facing the sea.

The sea also sets the calendar. Every four years in November the Route du Rhum single-handed yacht race leaves for Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe. La Route du Rock, a music festival held each August, has also held a winter event since 2006, and the town's Étonnants Voyageurs festival now presents the Grand prix de l'Imaginaire, a French literary award for speculative fiction.

The rebuilt city has a literary life of its own. Saint-Malo is one of the main settings of Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel All the Light We Cannot See, set during the siege of 1944, and was a filming location for the Netflix series based on it. Even in summer, much of the town's character comes from the tides, which reshape the shore twice a day and set the hours for walking out to the islands.

The commune had about 47,000 residents in 2023 and the wider urban area about 138,000 in 2022, but the summer season can push the number of people in town up to around 300,000. Saint-Malo is a subprefecture of Ille-et-Vilaine and the most visited place in Brittany, and tourism, the ferry port and the harbour drive much of the economy, alongside an institute of technology, a nursing school and a maritime school.

Many Malouins live in the districts that grew up on the mainland — Rocabey, Marville and the streets around the station — in the old town of Saint-Servan, with its own harbour and shopping streets, and in Paramé behind the long beach. Rennes, the regional capital, is about an hour away by train.

Life follows the tides and the seasons: low water opens the causeways to the tidal islands, high water covers the causeways again, and between October and March the walled city quietens. Regular ferries to England and the Channel Islands keep a steady flow of British and island visitors through the port year round.

Saint-Malo eats like the rest of Brittany, and the crêperie is the everyday restaurant. A Breton galette is a savoury pancake made with buckwheat flour, and sweet crêpes follow as dessert. Kouign-amann, a round Breton cake of laminated dough with layers of butter and sugar baked slowly until the sugar caramelises, originated in Douarnenez around 1860 and is sold in bakeries across the town. Far breton is a dense baked custard-like cake similar to a clafoutis batter, usually with prunes or raisins.

Seafood comes from the bay. Oysters from nearby Cancale, the oyster capital of Brittany, are the local pride, sold at producers' stalls on Cancale's harbour and served in the city's restaurants, along with mussels and seafood platters.

The drinks are Breton too: cider, local beers and chouchen, a mead made by fermenting honey in water, traditionally with buckwheat honey, of about 14 per cent alcohol and drunk chilled as an aperitif. Calvados from neighbouring Normandy, an apple or pear brandy, also appears at the end of many meals.