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Home > Travel France > France Destinations > Nantes
Nantes
France, officially the French Republic, is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in Western Europe and comprises various overseas islands and territories which are located in other regions. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. At 674,843 square kilometers, France is the world's 40th-largest country after Myanmar. France is a member of The European Union and Paris is the capital of this nation. The sole official language of France is French. Since prehistoric times, France has been a crossroads of trade, migrations, and invasions.
Nantes is a city in western France, near the Atlantic coast, with 711,120 inhabitants in the metropolitan area at the 1999 census. Nantes is the capital of the Pays de la Loire region, as well as the prefecture of the Loire-Atlantique department. It is also the most important city of Brittany. The land area is 65.19 square kilometers, and density is 4,304 square kilometers in 2004. Population of the city at the 2004 estimation was 280,600.
Nantes is located on the banks of the Loire river, at the confluence of the Erdre and the Sevre Nantaise, near the river's mouth, 55 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean. The city was built in a place where many branches of the Loire river created several islands, but most of those branches were filled in at the beginning of the 20th century due to the increasing car traffic.
Formerly the capital of Brittany, Nantes was separated from the region by the Vichy government in June 1941. Although the city has been part of the Pays de la Loire region since 1971, the feeling that Nantes belongs to Brittany is still solid nowadays. For cultural and political reasons, many people still identify with Brittany. Loire-Atlantique is a department on the west coast of France named after the Loire River and the Atlantic Ocean.
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