Saint-Nazaire’s industrial heritage offers the visitor a fascinating mix of sights. I have to admit that they weren’t on my bucket list but after a visit to the city, I’ve changed my mind.

Here’s a list of must-see industrial heritage attractions in Saint-Nazaire which happily is a relatively compact city and so is very easy to get around. Most of these attractions are good for families with excellent explanations and hands-on exhibits. The exceptions are the tours of the Chantiers de l’Atlantique and Airbus which are mainly coach tours.

Escal’Atlantic Tour

I started with the soft option: a tour around the Escal’Atlantic which tells the story of the great passenger liners. The ships built in Saint-Nazaire by the world-famous Chantiers de l’Atlantique are names to conjure with, like SS Normandie where the first-class dining hall was longer than the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. 700 rich passengers sat down to eat here 3 times a day.

The rich travelled in style; the poor in steerage. The rich went on endless vacations; the poor were escaping the poverty of the old world for the promise of the new.

The tour (both French and English tours available) takes you through the geographic spread of destinations from the 19^th century onwards. You walk past boards showing how the ships speeded up from Saint-Nazaire to the overseas ports; you learn the stories of the passengers; you watch a moving old film of the arrival in New York of so many displaced from Europe.

You look into small cabins, see how useful the luxury Louis Vuitton travel trunk was, peer down at the huge engine rooms, go out on deck and finish in the mock-up of a restaurant where kosher and pet menus were offered along with lavish 7-course feasts for those 700 diners.

My Guide to Escal’Atlantic

Chantiers de l’Atlantique

The Chantiers de l’Atlantique is a remarkable institution. This is one of the great shipyards of the world; the place where cruise ships, military ships and latterly, the electrical substations that power offshore wind farms are developed and built.

The company has built over 70 passenger ships in its history, among them SS Normandie, SS France, and RMS Queen Mary II.

Today they are foremost in building new cruise ships for the world’s biggest companies: Celebrity Cruises, Caribbean Cruises, MSC and more.

Chantiers de l’Atlantique Tour

You can take a 2-hour tour of the shipyards, but only in a coach with a French guide (and English headphones). The shipyard keeps its industrial secrets and you cannot take pictures. You also have to provide ID (passport, not a driving licence) before getting on the coach at the Tourist Office.

The visit takes you through security and into the areas which cover the whole process of building these great ships. It’s an insight into how complex it is. You start in the steelyard where steel in different forms is cut and assembled into various sections.

The coach drives you past huge buildings where larger sections are being welded together. You look at huge steel sections and wonder what they are then realise you’re seeing part of a huge hull, or the middle part of a cruise ship.

You see the ships’ interiors in the hangars where they are being fitted out. You get out of the coach at the final stage, to watch two huge gantry cranes lift blocks (up to 1,400 tons) into place. The ships are now in the docks that will eventually open to launch these huge, and hugely impressive, beauties on their journeys around the world.

Information and tickets for the Chantiers de l’Atlantique.

Watch the Ships Launch

Every time a ship is launched, the whole town celebrates. Join the locals flocking to the two main places to see the ships leaving the Loire estuary, the Vieux Môle and Place du Commando. 

For an excellent in-depth description of the Chantiers de l’Atlantique, read my partner’s article on mechtraveller.com.

Espadon Submarine

The Espadon is a French submarine built in 1958. Decommissioned in 1985, she was towed to Saint-Nazaire to become the first French submarine on display to the public. The Espadon was substantially restored in 2021 and opened to visitors in July.

I find submarines sinister from the outside and claustrophobic inside. So my visit was rather fast, particularly as you need a certain amount of knowledge to appreciate the finer points.

There are two audio guides in English, both activated automatically as you walk through the ship. One is the story of the youngest sailor in the crew which I took. It’s good if you want to understand his reactions to the ship (very much like mine). The second is told from the point of view of a journalist who was on board when the Espadon undertook her most famous patrol. She was part of the arctic team exploring under the pack ice in the Norwegian Sea in May 1964.

You climb down a steep staircase into the submarine. Walk along a narrow passage past complicated equipment, past the torpedo bay, the control room and crew quarters, one shower room and one toilet (for the 65 man crew!) and look down at the engines.

You’ll find Espadon in the fortified lock opposite the main submarine base where the Tourist Office is housed.

Information and tickets for the Espadon submarine

The EOL Centre éolien – Offshore Wind Farm Visitor Centre 

The visitor centre about wind farms is unexpectedly great fun. It’s very hands-on, with lots of small models to explain how winds and wind turbines work. And it teaches both children and adults about this great source of energy. You blow, you cycle, you pit yourself against the wind…with consequences.

The French have been slow in adopting wind power. But now the wind farm just off Saint-Nazaire is up and running. Two more of them are about to come on line, in Fécamp (Seine- Maritime) and Courseulles-sur-Mer.

The centre’s here in Saint-Nazaire as the Chantiers de l’Atlantique are building the electricity substations.

Information and tickets for the oelian centre

Up on the Roof

Go up onto the roof where there’s a great view of the shipyards and the sea, and the turbines slowly turning in the distance. When we were there an outdoor photographic exhibition showed the restoration of the Espadon. And there’s a useful information sign showing where the turbines are located and explaining more about the projects.

Look a little closer

We walked further along the quayside for a fascinating, closer glimpse at the huge pylons that are driven into the sea bed to hold the eolians.

The sight of these just reinforced my first impression of Saint-Nazaire – everything is very BIG!

Airbus Tour

Airbus is a huge and significant industry in France. The headquarters are just outside Toulouse, but Saint-Nazaire has two production sites. Here Airbus produces various parts of airplanes and assembles, equips and tests the fuselage sections of different aircraft including the A380 jet liners.

They are transported to assembly line locations in Europe either by sea for the larger components or by Airbus’ Beluga cargo aircraft. This strange looking aircraft is affectionally named the baleine volante (flying whale). Whenever it flies over the city, everyone looks up.  

You can take a tour of Airbus, though if you come from outside the EU (and that applies also to UK residents) you have to book 3 weeks in advance. You also need to take a passport with you as an identity document. Like the Chantiers de l’Atlantique, Airbus is extremely wary of industrial espionage – so no photos!

Information and tickets for Airbus Tours

Read a General Guide to Saint-Nazaire for other attractions, where to stay, eat and shop.

Practical Information

Saint-Nazaire Tourist Office
Atlantic-Loire Valley Tourist Office
Brittany Tourist Office

How to get to Saint-Nazaire

Saint-Nazaire is in Brittany, in the Loire-Atlantique region.

By car:
The nearest ferry port from the UK is St-Malo used by Brittany Ferries. It’s around 200 kms/124 miles and takes around 2 hrs 30 mins. We came from Dieppe on DFDS ferries, around 500 kms/310 miles taking around 5 hrs.
More about Ferries to France from the UK.

By Train:
Take the TGV non-stop train from Paris Montparnasse to Nantes (2hrs 7 mins). Then take the local TER train from Nantes to St Nazaire (47 mins).

By Air:
Major European airlines fly to Nantes, as do budget airlines like easyJet and Ryanair. They fly from UK and European destinations. Catch the shuttle bus to the railway station.

More about the French Atlantic Coast

French Atlantic Coast Guide from Brittany to the Spanish border.
Drive along the Loire Valley from Saumur to Saint-Nazaire

The post The Industrial Heritage of Saint-Nazaire appeared first on Mary Anne's France.

Saint-Nazaire’s Escal’Atlantic tells the story of the great passenger liners of the past. It does a great job recreating the history and life of those transatlantic liners that set off from France to take people to the far ends of the world. The stately ships were bound for south America, Europe, Asia and of course the new world of New York.

Down at the docks

Escal’Atlantic is housed in the huge concrete submarine base built on the site of the old docks in 1940. The formidable Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (also known as The French Line) was founded here in 1862. But the strategic importance of the site, with easy access straight into the Atlantic, led to the inevitable destruction of the old docks by the Germans in 1940 and the building of their formidable submarine base.

Today’s ocean-going passenger liners are built nearby by Les Chantiers de l’Atlantique which is also well worth a visit. In October 2022 they finished and launched the mighty new MSC World Europa, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas (LNG)-powered cruise ship.

The Golden Age of the Great Passenger Liners

The great ocean liners of the past came into their own with the development of steam power.  For two centuries they pioneered new routes and opened up the world. The only way to travel from continent to continent, Saint-Nazaire was in the forefront of shipbuilding and became the base for journeys, first to Central America.

Some of the ships were well known; others like SS La Provence which took 7 days from Le Havre to New York are not such household names. The largest ship in the French merchant marine and the largest built in France at the time, she was torpedoed and sunk in the Mediterranean in 1916.

It was the great ocean liners, many built in Saint-Nazaire and operated by the the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, that set the standards. In the 1920s, wealthy Americans escaping prohibition made up many of the passengers in the top class cabins on ships like the Ile de France, launched in 1927.

Then came the Depression and a downturn until the mid 1930s when the style was set by the SS Normandie. Built in Saint-Nazaire and launched in May 1935 she was the fastest, most technologically advanced passenger ship, crossing the Atlantic from Le Havre to New York in a record 4.14 days. She’s the most powerful steam turbo-electric-propelled passenger ship ever built.

Walk through a reconstructed passenger liner

Step up a gangplank into the museum and you step inside a life of contrasts where the rich travelled in style, and the poor in steerage.

You can take a guided tour (currently only in French though they are working on an English alternative), or guide yourself on a 90-minute tour.

The museum is easy to walk through starting with the reception room that would have greeted past passengers.

In a darkened space a large screen video lights up with the routes as they were added from different ports.

A series of rooms are connected by corridors where panels show how long the journeys were, how many passengers the passengers liners took and the cost of the different classes.

Setting the style

SS Normandie was the dernier mot in the new luxury paquebot style. Architect Pierre Patout created the Art Déco and Streamline Moderne style that even today looks as elegant as in the past. 

Other French designers created the luxury cabins, dining rooms, bars, swimming pool and winter garden. Jean Dunand designed the huge lacquer panels that greeted passengers in the reception hall (and you see one of his fabulous over-the-top creations on the tour). Specially designed Christofle silver, porcelain and glassware glittered on the tables in the dining rooms. Lalique glass torchères  and engraved glass panels made by the Cristallerie de Compiègne, better known as Degué added extra sparkle to already impressive rooms.

Something I would love to have seen is the children’s dining room. It was decorated by Jean de Brunhoff, who covered the walls with Babar the Elephant and his entourage.

Escal’Atlantic takes elements from many of the luxury passenger liners. You see some of the furniture and chairs like this one which had a small chain to attach it to the floor. So you wouldn’t be embarrassed while sipping your cocktail and sliding across the floor.

And the Louis Vuitton cabin trunk shown in all its glory still has the wow factor.

Third class passengers

A little further on you descend to the third class cabins. No luxury here for those people, mostly migrants, escaping the poverty of Europe.

A crackling old film shows the journey, where the passengers came from, and their arrival and reception at Ellis Island. Stoic, strong, sometimes frightened, they stepped off the ship to begin a new life in the USA. Migration began early: between 1870 and 1925 60 million Europeans took the voyage.

Become a director of a maritime company

It’s worth playing the game on a huge round video table of a map of the world with other visitors. You become the director of a maritime company. Which journey will you take? Le Havre to New York? Saint-Nazaire to Veracruz? Then you’re off, managing your fleet, ships and hopefully the weather.

Where the real work was done

Steps take you past the engines below. Impressive but it must have been hell to work there.

A giant larder

Pause at the panel about the food that had to be taken on board. It’s the 1880s and the ships have to cater for 1638 passengers and 812 staff. Everything is here from fresh parsley to champagne with 2,500 kilos of cheese, 300 pineapples, 8,000 bananas, 15,000 lemons, 20,000 oranges, 7,000 pears and everything else in vast quantities. After all they had to make 700 kilos of bread every day.

Back on deck. Quoits anyone?

You go back through the reception lounge and onto an imagined deck complete with very posh loungers in leather. Copies of their own magazine, L’Atlantique hang from the chairs. A large screen shows you the passing landscape; a few other ships, seagulls and horror of horrors…icebergs.

The last part of the visit

At the final part of the visit you emerge at the bar where you can order a cocktail.

A stairway leads you down, in your sweeping gown of course, to a dining room. Panels on the walls reproduce the original dining rooms while glassware and silver show you how expensive the whole experience was.

Everything was over the top in these glorious passenger liners. Normandie‘s first-class dining hall was the largest room afloat. At 93m (305 ft), it was longer than the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles, seating 700 diners at 157 tables.

And as for the menus

Equally as fascinating are the menus. These were predictably grand, and filling. They included a bewildering range of dishes, always including hors d’oevres, soups, fish, meat, vegetables, cheese, delicious desserts, coffee and tea. Nobody in first class went hungry. One day it might be an 11-course choice running from grapefruit, through caviar, a soup, turbot fillet, chicken with fresh vegetable dish. It’s followed by spit roasted beef and buttered new potatoes and salad. To finish glazed biscuits and La Corbeille Fleurie de Friandises  – make of that what you will. You could always just choose fruit.

And for your dog? Consommé of beef, Le Regal de Sweekey which is mince meat with carrots,  spinach and side toast, La Gâterie ‘France’ of minced chicken, green beans and rice topped with meat stock and crushed biscuits. Then bones of beef, ham and veal followed by fresh vegetables and pasta and to end Biscuit. Bizarre.

There were also strict kosher menus with around 36 Americans per trip choosing them.

The end of the journey

Don’t worry. If all else fails there’s always the lifeboat.