Nantes

Nantes is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, 50 km from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 320,732 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabitants. With Saint-Nazaire, a seaport on the Loire estuary, Nantes forms one of the main north-western French metropolitan agglomerations.

It is the administrative seat of the Loire-Atlantique department and the Pays de la Loire region, one of 18 regions of France. Nantes belongs historically and culturally to Brittany, a former duchy and province, and its omission from the modern administrative region of Brittany is controversial.