Dinan is a French commune, a sub-prefecture located in the
Côtes-d'Armor department in the Brittany region. It is a town in the
Poudouvre, a traditional country in the northeast of Upper Brittany.
By order of the Prefect of Côtes-d'Armor dated September 30,
2017, published in JORF No. 21 of January 26, 2018 of September 30,
2017, the new municipality of Dinan was created in place of the
municipalities of Dinan and Léhon ( canton of Dinan, arrondissement
of Dinan) from January 1, 2018.
The town of Dinan is
fortified by a belt of ramparts and was defended by an imposing
castle. Strategic point for traffic between Normandy and the north
coast of Brittany, Dinan is built mainly on a hill. The city
dominates by 75 m the Rance which flows north to flow into the
Channel between Saint-Malo and Dinard. Dinan long proposed the
northernmost bridge to cross the Rance and its wide estuary.
Dinan is the headquarters of Dinan Agglomeration, an agglomeration
community created in 2017.
Its 14,222 inhabitants (in 2016)
are Dinannais and Dinannaises.
The castle of Dinan is a former fortified castle, from the
fourteenth century, having replaced an ancient fortress, altered
several times, which stands in the French commune of Dinan in the
Côtes-d'Armor department, in the Brittany region. The castle is
classified as historical monuments by decree of July 12, 1886.
An ancient fortress stood in Dinan before the castle erected in
the fourteenth century. In 1064, William led an expedition against
Brittany in which Harold Godwinson actively participated, who would
then be his opponent at the Battle of Hastings. The Bayeux tapestry,
scene 18 to 20, relates the successive captures of the fortresses of
Dol-de-Bretagne, Rennes, where Conan II of Brittany took refuge
after having fled Dol-de-Bretagne, and Dinan, where Conan made the
keys to the city at the end of a spear.
Having emerged
victorious from the war of succession in Brittany, John IV the
Conqueror, Duke of Brittany, decided to build a main tower in Dinan
in 1380 in order to assert his authority in a city that had long
supported his rival Charles from Blois. Under the supervision of the
master builder Étienne le Tur, the site was completed in 1393 and
perhaps even as early as 1384. Made up of two round towers adjoining
the junction of which is reinforced to the west by a square front
section, the building rises to more than 30 meters. The crown is
reinforced by consoles of machicolation with four projections. The
lower projection, very stretched, allows the console to rely on a
larger number of seats, while offering a high quality aesthetic
rendering. Originally, a slate roof covered the whole.
At the
end of the 16th century, Dinan became a stronghold of the Catholic
League and, under the impetus of the Duke of Mercœur, governor of
Brittany, major modifications were undertaken. In order to reunite
the main tower with the Coëtquen tower (an artillery tower erected
at the end of the 15th century), a military sheath called “the
Mercoeur underground” was fitted, leading to the condemnation of the
Guichet gate which was then walled up. At the same time, a high
courtyard, protected by spur structures, was built. Very
significantly, it is towards the city, and not towards the outside,
that the embrasures are then turned.
Abandoned in the 17th
century, the castle is the subject of two reports, in 1693 and 1701,
by the military engineer Siméon Garangeau. Boasting the
architectural quality of the building, he suggests work to transform
the main tower into a military prison. Throughout the eighteenth
century, English sailors lived there by the hundreds. As a result of
these transformations, the roof is permanently replaced by a terrace
while the apse of the chapel is pierced to accommodate a new front
door.
Having become a common law prison in the 19th century,
the castle was bought at the beginning of the 20th century by the
town of Dinan which set up its municipal museum there in 1908.
Dedicated to the history and crafts of Dinan and its territory, the
collections of the Museum of Dinan include many ethnographic objects
collected in the municipalities of the edges of Rance. Gradually
withdrawn from the castle in 2015, the collections are now kept in
the municipal reserves.
In 2014, the City of Dinan wished to
carry out an ambitious program of restoration and enhancement of the
monument made possible thanks to important historical research which
allowed another look at the castle. Inaugurated on June 9, 2019,
this project includes major work on the monument - starting with the
opening to the public of the "Mercoeur underground" and the
restitution of the influence of the main courtyard - but also the
implementation of place of a new scenography whose two themes "the
art of war in the fifteenth century" and "daily life in the princely
residences" are at the service of the understanding of the castle
and its architecture.
By train
Take the TGV towards Saint-Malo and get off at
Dol-de-Bretagne. Take the Dol-Dinan line (quite bucolic route)
Dinan station
By car
Car parks (underground and outdoor) paying at 1 € per
hour.
Free car parks: Porte Saint-Malo, Grands Fossés, Place
Duguesclin (all year except summer from mid-June to September)
By bus
Bus lines are not numerous.
In 2006, the single
ticket was 0.76 €.
The main lines are:
Line 2: Place
Duclos / Station / Hospital
Line 4: Place Duclos / Le Port /
Youth hostel
In Breton and Gallo, the name is also spelled Dinan. It is pronounced
in Breton KLT. According to Bernard Tanguy, it is the Breton name that
could explain its origin, consisting of the words din (modern variant of
dun) "fortress" or "fortin" and the diminutive suffix an, that is to say
the "small fortress". It would therefore be closer to Kastell Dinn, the
castle of Dinan, a rock formation on the Crozon peninsula, as well as
Kastell-Dinan or Castel Dinan, a feudal motte in Plouigneau.
The
etymology of Dinan, however, has given rise to several other hypotheses
and conjectures. It would come from the Gallic Dun designating a
fortified hill and from the Breton toponym nan [t] designating a
"valley". Dinan would literally mean "the fortified height dominating
the valley".
Like some other major cities in Upper Brittany, the
locality is also known in Breton under the traditional name of Dinam.
The region of Dinan has been inhabited since the Neolithic, as evidenced by the presence of a ruined dolmen at the exit of the city in the direction of Lanvallay. Its proximity to the great Gallo-Roman city of Corseul and the Gallic and then Gallo-Roman port of Taden make it possible to deduce a human occupation during this period.
The history of Dinan is better known from the eleventh century,
although the site has been occupied since antiquity. At the time, it was
a village in which a Benedictine convent was established. In 1064, the
Normans of Duke William the Bastard besieged the castle on Motte. This
assault appears on the Bayeux tapestry.
Organized around the
parishes of Saint-Malo and Saint-Sauveur, half of Dinan was bought in
1283 by the Duke of Brittany Jean le Roux. It is at this time that the
city acquires the belt of ramparts that we know it. The towers of
Beaumanoir, Vaucouleurs, Saint-Julien, Beaufort, du Connétable, de
Coëtquen, Penthièvre, Longue and Sainte-Catherine surround the old town
in the trigonometric direction. This still intact walkway over 2,600 m
is pierced by the gates of Jerzual, Saint-Malo, Brest, the Wicket and
later Saint-Louis (1620).
In 1357, during the war of succession
of the Duchy of Brittany, Bertrand Du Guesclin and his brother Olivier
successfully defend the city besieged by English troops and the Bretons
loyal to Jean de Montfort. He faced Thomas of Canterbury in single
combat and emerged victorious. In 1364, after several unsuccessful
attempts, Duke John IV manages to regain control of the city and has the
Ducal Tower built there.
The fortifications of the city were
modernized in the second half of the fifteenth century with the addition
of several artillery towers. This involves the destruction of the part
of the suburbs located against the walls by the fire, in order to clear
a glaze. The nearby Léhon castle was then abandoned. The guns never
fired: the governor of the city returns the keys to the representative
of the King of France after the battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier in
1488. Like all the other Breton cities, Dinan was definitively attached
to the Kingdom of France in August 1532.
The city continues to prosper, with a sustained intramural craft
activity and the presence of the port on the Rance which promotes trade.
Dinan controls the waterway allowing goods to be transported to
Saint-Malo. In 1598, Dinan chose the side of the new king of France,
Henry IV, against his governor, Philippe-Emmanuel of Lorraine, Duke of
Mercœur, who opposed him during the wars of the League. It is from this
time that the fortifications lose their defensive use and are no longer
maintained.
In the seventeenth century, other religious orders
set up new convents: Capuchins, Ursulines, Benedictines, Dominicans,
Poor Clares were added to the Cordeliers and the Jacobins. From this
century, the city opens a new economic door with its mineral spring "The
Fountain of Waters". A first book was published in 1648 by Jan Duhamel
but the site will develop more widely in the eighteenth century.
Dinan participated in the Stamped paper Revolt that occurred in 1675.
The bailiwick of Dinan depended on the abbey of Notre-Dame du Tronchet.
In the eighteenth century, commercial activity was stimulated by the
installation of many weavers, who produced in particular fabrics used
for the sails of ships, then sent to Saint-Malo by the valley of the
Rance. Under the impetus of a developing bourgeoisie, various measures
are being taken to combat the insalubrity prevailing in the city, in
parallel with its extramural development.
From 1769, the city of
Dinan will invest in its "Fountain of Waters", a source of mineral
waters which has "miraculous" virtues according to some analysts of the
time. The valley will be arranged to receive many noble curists, coming
from the province and from Paris itself. This development of the valley
is not negligible in the economy of the city and will grow even more in
the nineteenth century.
During the Revolution, Jean Jules Coupard, a lawyer born in 1740, was elected deputy of the Third Estate to the States General of 1789 and therefore participated in the administrative reorganization of France and in the drafting of the constitution of 1791. He was again elected deputy in 1792 at the Convention. Marie Toussaint Gagon du Chesnay, lawyer and former mayor of Dinan, is also a deputy to the Estates General. He adheres to new ideas. The constitution of 1791 provided that the deputies of the States General could not represent themselves in the National Legislative Assembly: he therefore retired to his lands in 1791. At the end of the Revolution, he was called by Bonaparte to the post of sub-prefect of Dinan.
During the episodes of the second Paris Commune, the city of Dinan
experienced an export of this political model, and thus was created the
Commune of Dinan still officially existing.
In the nineteenth
century, the port gradually loses its importance, with the construction
of a road viaduct which unclogs the city, in 1852, and with the arrival
of the railway in 1879. The city is seeing the construction of many
opulent mansions and is gradually turning into a holiday destination,
particularly popular with the British.
During his visit to the country of Dinan, Thomas Edward Lawrence,
known as Lawrence of Arabia, wrote to his mother: "I fell in love with
the Rancid" in a letter dated August 26, 1907 where he compared the
canal to the banks of the Thames in London as well as the Isis river
used by the rowing races of the University of Oxford.
Lawrence of
Arabia had a passion for cider. In England, he had discovered the
"modern ciders", ciders made from table apples.
Despite a fire in
1907 that destroyed five half-timbered houses, and a bombing in August
1944, the city has not seen great changes since the beginning of the
twentieth century.
Dinan was then a garrison town (the 10th artillery regiment and the 13th hussar regiment were based there).
Ange Dubreuil, born and settled in Dinan, was arrested for initiating
a brawl with a young German soldier in a bar in the rue de la Chaux. He
was arrested, tried and sentenced to death. The Prefect of the
Côtes-du-nord intervened with the Lieutenant General (French) so that he
asked the German authorities to commute this sentence: the latter did
nothing about it. Ange Dubreuil was shot on December 5, 1940... for a
simple fight.
Anne Beaumanoir, then a medical student and
resistance fighter, brings two Jewish children to Dinan whom she made
escape from a Parisian raid and hides them with her parents Jean and
Marthe Beaumanoir. All three of them are recognized as righteous among
the nations.
On August 2, 1944, the Americans of the 6th Armored
Division (6th US Armored Division) approach Dinan. In Lanvallay, they
are severely hung up by the German troops who resist. They decide to
bypass the resistance nest, and continue their race towards Brest.
During their retreat, an artillery barrage and air support are carried
out to cover the withdrawal of American troops. It was only on August 6,
1944 that a reconnaissance group from the 802nd Tank Destroyer Battalion
(802nd Anti-tank Battalion) learned that Dinan and Lanvallay had been
evacuated by German troops. They conduct several reconnaissance in the
city and free it. The next day, a regiment and a reconnaissance group
pass Dinan, and progress towards Dinard, which is one of the strongholds
of the Festung Saint-Malo.
Originally from Ille-et-Vilaine, René
Fayon settled with his family in Dinan as a caretaker of the
Fountain-of-Waters bridge. A member of the Dinan FTP group, he was led,
with his comrades, to storm the Dinan prison on April 11, 1944 in order
to free two important members of the Ille-et-Vilaine FTP directorate.
Although very risky, the operation was a success. On the morning of May
9, 1944, René Fayon was arrested during his guard duty near the viaduct
on the Dinan-Dinard railway line. Suspected of acts of terrorism and
carrying a revolver, he was transferred to Rennes prison. Tried and
sentenced to the death penalty on May 30, he was shot the next day, May
31, at the Maltière camp in Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande with 9 other of
his comrades from the Dinan sector.
The monument to the dead
The war memorial bears the names of 308 soldiers who died for the
Motherland :
258 died during the First World War ;
33 died during
the Second World War ;
8 died during the Algerian War ;
9 died
during the Indochina War.
The barracks, long occupied by hussar and dragoon regiments, will
gradually empty of their soldiers.
In 1979, the 11th Marine
Artillery Regiment (RAMA), left the Duguesclin barracks that it had
occupied since 1948, for the Ouée Heath (Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier). The
9th command and support regiment (9th RCS) (which occupied the
Beaumanoir district) support regiment of the 9th DIMA, will remain in
the city until 1986, before moving to Nantes. In 1998, the national
school of Specialization of the health service for the army (ENSSSAT)
located in Dinan since 1981 is abolished, 500 soldiers leave the city.
Nowadays, the city has largely restored its heritage. Half-timbered
houses still line the Place des Cordeliers, the Rue de l'Horloge, the
famous Rue du Jerzual and other cobbled streets in the center. The
churches of Saint-Sauveur and Saint-Malo rise in the middle of the old
parishes of the city.
The barracks Beaumanoir and Duguesclin,
disused, were bought by the town. It retains 60% of the buildings to
develop the new Europe district, combining rehabilitated military
constructions, contemporary buildings and green spaces. The entire
development covers almost 15 ha, the urban project was designed by the
architect firm Philippe Madec.
On the night of June 6 to 7, 2007,
a small portion of the ramparts collapsed on the main access street (rue
du Général-de-Gaulle), and requires consolidation work.
The
agglomeration of Dinan today overflows its ramparts and extends to the
municipalities of Léhon, Quévert, Taden and Lanvallay.
Since
September 2017, Dinan and Léhon have merged to form the new municipality
of Dinan. By order of the prefect of the Côtes-d'Armor dated September
30, 2017, published in JORF No. 21 from January 26, 2018 to September
30, 2017, the new municipality of Dinan is created instead of the
municipalities of Dinan and Léhon (canton of Dinan, arrondissement of
Dinan) as of January 1, 2018.
Dinan is located in the east of the Côtes-d'Armor department.
The Rance along the port of Dinan.
The Rance constituting the
eastern border of the commune.
In 2010, the climate of the municipality is of the frank oceanic
climate type, according to a CNRS study based on a series of data
covering the period 1971-2000. In 2020, Météo-France publishes a
typology of the climates of metropolitan France in which the
municipality is exposed to an oceanic climate and is in the climatic
region of eastern and southern Brittany, Pays Nantes, Vendée,
characterized by low rainfall in summer and good insolation. At the same
time, the environment observatory in Brittany publishes in 2020 a
climatic zoning of the Brittany region, based on data from Météo-France
from 2009. The municipality is, according to this zoning, in the
"Interior" zone, exposed to a median climate, predominantly oceanic.
For the period 1971-2000, the average annual temperature is 11.3 °
C, with an annual thermal amplitude of 12.2 ° C. The average annual
cumulative rainfall is 742 mm, with 12.3 days of precipitation in
January and 6.6 days in July. For the period 1991-2020 the annual
average temperature observed on the nearest meteorological station,
located in the town of Quiou 12 km as the crow flies, is 11.6 ° C and
the average annual cumulative rainfall is 757.4 mm. For the future, the
climate parameters of the municipality estimated for 2050 according to
different greenhouse gas emission scenarios can be consulted on a
dedicated website published by Météo-France in November 2022.
Dinan is an urban municipality, because it is part of the dense or
intermediate density municipalities, within the meaning of the Insee's
communal density grid. It belongs to the urban unit of Dinan, an
intra-departmental agglomeration grouping 7 municipalities and 27,885
inhabitants in 2017, of which it is the city-center.
Moreover,
the town is part of the attraction area of Dinan, of which it is the
town-center. This area, which includes 25 municipalities, is categorized
as areas with less than 50,000 inhabitants.