Les Sables-d'Olonne is a new French commune, sub-prefecture of
the Vendée department in the Pays-de-la-Loire region.
The
municipality results from the merger of the municipalities of
Château-d'Olonne, Olonne-sur-Mer and Sables-d'Olonne on January 1,
2019, which makes it the second most populous municipality in the
department after La Roche-sur-Yon.
At the end of the 2010s,
it offered one of the strongest tourist attractions among French
cities with a thousand to ten thousand inhabitants according to a
study.
The Embankment (Lafargue and Clemenceau promenades) hosts many
nineteenth-century villas, facing the sea and listed in the inventory of
historical monuments, the others being scattered throughout the city
center. Among the villas that line the Embankment, one of the most
emblematic is the Palazzo Clementina, built in 1919, the work of the
Sablais architect Charles Charrier. Belonging to the seaside
architecture of Sablaise, the palazzo belongs to castle-type villas
since it borrows its eclecticism from Italian castles and palaces. On
the one hand, the imposing facade gives an impression of a fortress,
reinforced by the tower, the watchtowers (stone gatehouse) and the
loopholes, on the other, various whimsical touches recall the holiday
home. The seaside function is reinforced by the famous crenellated tower
similar to a lighthouse. Windows and terraces are oriented towards the
sea to give its occupants the enjoyment of an exceptional panorama.
Its three ports :
the fishing port (4th port in France in value
after those of Lorient, Boulogne-sur-Mer and Guilvinec) and its auction
;
the industrial port of La Cabaude in the afloat basin, with a
passage of 943,811 tons of goods having passed through in 2019 ;
the
marina: Port Olona, home to the start of the Vendée Globe.
Several places of worship, including :
the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Port
church, built between 1646 and the eighteenth century, its western
facade evokes the Renaissance; during the Revolution, it became the
temple of Reason before being a granary then it found its vocation in
1800, located in the center ;
the Saint-Pierre church, rue des
Deux-Phares ;
the Sainte-Croix Abbey, built from 1633 to 1639, it
houses, after the departure of the sisters, the military hospital, an
internment camp, a military improvement center, is requisitioned by the
Germans then, bought by the municipality, it is a cultural center, the
Sand museum, the music school, and, currently, the media library ;
the Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Espérance chapel, known as
Notre-Dame-des-Marins, built in 1850, houses a statue of the Virgin in
polychrome wood, former figurehead of a ship, which would have saved the
life of Flandrine de Nassau, shipwrecked off Bourgenay. It is located at
37 rue de l'amidonnerie ;
the church of St. Michael. On its new
forecourt is installed in 2018 a statue of Saint Michael previously
present between 1935 and 2017 in the grounds of a private school. After
an association has requested its withdrawal from the public space based
on the law of 1905, a consultation takes place, of which 94.51% of the
participants vote for its maintenance. The administrative court of
appeal of Nantes nevertheless confirms its withdrawal.
The
cemetery, in the Arago district, with nineteenth-century tombs.
The
Passage district, between port and beach, with its old houses and narrow
streets, including :
the street of Paradise (currently Manuel Street)
;
the street of Hell, listed in the Guinness Book of Records in 1987
as being the narrowest street in the world with 40 cm on the ground ;
the Fast Street…
The Penotte Island district, pedestrian alleys and
facades decorated with shell mosaics.
Its halls and markets :
the
central market halls, in the heart of the city, in Baltard style, house
a daily market and a local producers' market, on Wednesdays and
Saturdays ;
the fish market, on the fishing port ;
the Arago
covered market.
The Sainte-Croix Abbey museum, the MASC (modern and
contemporary art): with works by Victor Brauner, Gaston Chaissac,
Philippe Cognée, Claude Viseux, Robert Combas, René Leleu, Albert
Marquet, Peter Saul ..., room dedicated to folk arts and bathing
practices, cycle of conferences on modern art organized by the Society
of Friends of the museum, chaired by Jacques Masson.
The Marin-Marais
Conservatory of Music, located behind the Sainte-Croix Abbey.
The
Sables-d'Olonne zoo, in La Rudelière, in a lush and flowery vegetation.
The Blockhouse-hospital of Sables-d'Olonne, built by the Germans in 1943
and transformed into a museum on the Second World War opened to the
public in 2017.
Districts of the Thatch and the Aubraie
The
castle of Saint-Clair which shelters at the top of its keep the
lighthouse called "of the tower of Arundel".
The priory of
Saint-Nicolas, place of exhibitions. Nearby, the memorial of the
Perishes at sea, mosaic by Jacques Launois.
The Paracou, discovery of
the fauna and flora of the foreshore, its old fish lock.
Seashell
Museum.
Church of St. Mary of Olonne
The basilical style of the oldest
building in the Olonne Country, used by the Carolingians, suggests that
the church of Sainte-Marie d'Olonne existed before its first mention in
1042. The church was burned down twice during the Wars of Religion and
its furniture was used as firewood by the troops stationed at the Pierre
Levée camp during the Vendée wars. Marked by the revolutionary episode
(its spire and its roof had, according to the memoirs of the shipowner
Sablais Collinet, burned down in 1797 after having been struck by
lightning), the church did not regain its roof until 1805. It was the
subject of restoration campaigns in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, and has been classified as a historical monument since 1908.
The church has the particularity of having a Romanesque nave and a
Gothic choir. Its octagonal spire rises to forty-five meters. The
western end of the north side of the nave constitutes the oldest part of
the building (typical ashlars can be observed on the north outer wall).
In addition to its Romanesque vaults, the Sainte-Marie d'Olonne church
has ornate pendant keystones from the fifteenth century and has hosted
since 1937 in its choir the shrine of Saint Paul, evangelizer of the
Olonne Country (the relics had been transferred to Burgundy at the time
of the Norman invasions). The large glass roof of the bedside dates from
1884.
The town of Olonne had another religious building before
the revolutionary period, a convent of the order of the Cordeliers. It
was burned down during the Wars of Religion and its bell tower was, like
that of the neighboring church, destroyed by a fire in 1797. The
building was dismantled and sold as a national asset during the
Revolution. There is no trace of it left today.
Historical monuments
The municipality has only one historical
monument, the abbey of Saint-Jean d'orbestier, Benedictine abbey founded
in 1107 by William, Count of Poitou and Duke of Aquitaine, whose still
existing parts have been inscribed since January 28, 1935. It has no
place or monument listed in the general inventory of cultural heritage,
nor any object listed in the inventory of historical monuments, nor in
the general inventory of cultural heritage.
Castle and manors
The Castle of Pierre-Levée (historical monument) was built on the model
of the Small Trianon of Versailles in the eighteenth century by the
Parisian architect Nicolas Ducret for Luc Pezot, shipowner and receiver
of the sizes of the election of the Sands. Completed in 1777, the castle
was the seat of a camp where some of the troops responsible for the
defense of the port of Les Sables during the Vendée wars stayed. Several
parts of the castle (private property) are classified. The entrance to
the courtyard of honor is through a beautiful wrought iron gate. The
castle has gardens from which the statues of naked goddesses that
originally adorned it were removed in the nineteenth century.
Every summer a volunteer scenography is held in the gardens of the
castle. It traces the history of the Pays des Olonnes since prehistory.
The manor of the Jarrie (property of the municipality) is an old
fortified house of the twelfth century located south of the town. Its
circular tower would have been added in the fourteenth century. The
ditches of the manor house were filled in during the Second World War by
German troops who had installed artillery pieces in the park to protect
the bay of Sables d'Olonne (the soldiers also destroyed the archives of
the manor house when they left).
The building and its
outbuildings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are currently
being restored.
The Manoir de la Mortière (property of the
municipality) is another fortified house located to the north of the
town. A start of vault remaining on its north facade reminds us of an
old entrance from the medieval period. The porch and the square tower
would be of the sixteenth century. The manor was offered by King Louis
XIII to Jacques Martin, who had been knighted for having saved his life
during the siege of La Rochelle (1628) and having come out mutilated (he
had both arms torn off by a bullet).
On the south-west corner of the
wall, a stone carved in the shape of a shell recalls that the town was
on one of the paths to Santiago de Compostela.
A last fortified
house, the Rocquerie (private property), was located to the west of the
village. Only a seventeenth-century door remains and, inside a well, the
entrance to an underground refuge two meters deep.
Prehistoric remains remain on the territory of the municipality. The
twin menhirs of Pierre-Levée are located near the castle to which they
gave their name. The one called La Conche Verte is located north of the
Olonne forest and would have served as a refuge for the evangelizer
Saint-Laurent in the fourth century. Another megalith, called the Stone
of Oaths, was moved near a fountain to the north of the town. Its
prehistoric nature is disputed.
At the exit of the village (Vairé
road) stands the 'monument to the dead. This one was made in 1922 by the
brothers Jan and Joël Martel. This monument consists of a statue
representing a grieving woman dressed in her local costume (called
Mother Susane in reference to the supposed model), resting on a base
decorated with two bas-reliefs representing Hairy men leaning on their
rifles.
The Quiet Father's house (private property), located near the
town, was used during the filming of the film of the same name (1946).
The room for Post-school Works inaugurated in 1927 by Edouard Herriot,
Minister of Public Education and Fine Arts at the time, has an
interesting metal frame. It is currently being rehabilitated to
accommodate the tourist office of the town.
The old noble house of La
Gachère (private property) stands in the village of the same name and
several nineteenth-century bourgeois houses (private properties) are
located in the town of Olonne-sur-mer.
Museum of folk traditions
The Olonnes Memory association has been managing the Folk Traditions
museum in the town of Olonne-sur-Mer since 1991.
This one traces life
in the Sablais hinterland at the end of the nineteenth century. The
association's collections present daily life, local costumes and
headdresses, traditional crafts and agricultural equipment of that time.
The museum also recreates the atmosphere of a classroom at the beginning
of the twentieth century.
It also hosts the collection gathered by an
Olonnais, Alphonse Guillet50, testimony of the War of 1914-1918.
Other places and monuments
We can also mention :
the Fenestreau
residence (private) ;
the church of Saint-Hilaire.
Natural
heritage
The wild coast
The town of Château-d'Olonne has the
particularity of having both a sandy beach and a very indented rocky
coast :
Tanchet beach (shared with Les Sables d'Olonne) ;
the
Hellhole, a natural gash into which the ocean rushes at high tide ;
the dunes of the Well of Hell ;
the cove of Saint-Jean-d'orbestier ;
anse aux Moines ;
the Saint-Jean Wood and its bunkers, vestiges of
the Atlantic Wall ;
the bay of Cayola and its pebbles.
This set is
traversed by a cyclo-pedestrian path.
Olonne-sur-Mer
The
delegated municipality of Olonne-sur-Mer has an important access to the
coastline (about 8 kilometers) with beaches of fine sand, rocks and
dunes on the edge of the Olonne National Forest :
the beach of
Sauveterre, famous surf spot ;
the Granges beach located in the north
of the town between the Olonne forest and the channel of the Gachère
Harbour which materializes the separation with the municipalities of
Brem-sur-Mer and Bretignolles-sur-Mer ;
the Aubraie beach between the
beach of Paracou (la Chaume) and that of Sauveterre ;
the Olonne
marshes which begin at La Roulière, the old port of Olonne before its
siltation.
Les Sables d'Olonne is located in the west center of France between
La Roche-sur-Yon and La Rochelle, in the Vendée (85), in the Pays de la
Loire.
By car
• From Paris (4 h 30) by the A11, via Le Mans (2
h 30), Angers by the A87 (1 h 30), Cholet, La Roche / Yon by the N160. •
From Bordeaux (3 h 30) by the A10, via Saintes (2 h) by the A837, La
Rochelle (1 h 30) by the D105 and the D949. • From Rouen (5 h 15) by the
A13, via Caen (4 h) by the A84, Rennes (2 h 15) by the N137, Nantes (1 h
15) by the A83, then the D763 and the N160.
By train
Paris
(Montparnasse station) - Nantes - Les Sables-d'Olonne. The TGV is direct
and serves Les Sables-d'olonnes daily (3:30 a.m.) Téoz (Coral trains,
refurbished and modernized) are also available.
By plane
You
will have to choose between Nantes airport and La Rochelle airport, then
take a taxi, the train or rent a car to get to Les Sables-d'Olonne.
By Boat
As a seaside town, if you own a boat, it will be possible
for you to get there with this means of transport. But make sure to
inform yourself about the available places at the port before setting
sail.
You have at your disposal 9 regular bus lines and 3 additional
shuttles in summer. All these lines are managed by the OLEANE network.
The 2013 price of the single ticket is € 1.5 for 45 min.
Bike
paths are also at your disposal to circulate and visit The Sables
d'Olonne in a more ecological way. The town hall puts at your disposal a
leaflet on the walks to be done in and around the town.
Les
Sables d'Olonne is a port city. Know that you have at your disposal to
cross water crossings shuttles called Ferrymen. You will be able to
visit the city center.
The sea covered a large part of the region at the time: Ol-ona, height above the water, would perhaps be of Celtic origin and would have given its name to four of the six municipalities that made up the region. At that time, it was Olonne who reigned supreme. The thirteenth century will see a younger sister emerge from the shadows, or rather from the sand: Les Sables-d'Olonne. Indeed, to replace the port of Talmont which is silting up, Prince Savary of Mauleon decides to develop the haven of Olonne towards the dunes protected by the Vertime Island. Louis XI, in 1472, separates Les Sables-d'Olonne from the city of Olonne to make it the main port of the country.
The municipality was created on January 1, 2019 by a prefectural
decree of August 17, 2018.
The foundation of Les
Sables-d'Olonne dates back to 1218. The current town of
Olonne-sur-Mer was in the Middle Ages a very active port located at
the bottom of a sheltered bay. The siltation of this bay as well as
that of Talmont lead Prince Savary of Mauleon to found a new port on
the site of the current district of La Chaume and in the dunes of
Olonne (where the name of the city comes from). The city will then
develop on the northern slope of the dune.
In 1754, Les
Sables-d'Olonne and La Chaume merged. In 1844, the law assigns to
the city, eighty-four hectares of marshy land then located in the
town of Olonne on which the Place de la Liberté and the Cours Dupont
will later be developed. The same year, the town of Château-d'Olonne
ceded sixty-one hectares of land to the town, located east of the
Arago cemetery. Always to ensure the development of the Sands, the
town of Château-d'Olonne will sell to the city the mouth of the
Tanchet in 1875 and the forest of Rudelière in 1913. The borders of
these three municipalities will remain identical until 2019.
The arrival of the railway in 1866 saw the emergence of the station
and Saint-Michel districts to the north of the city. The
constructions will continue to extend along the main roads between
the city center of Les Sables and the peripheral villages of Olonne
and Château-d'Olonne. From the 1930s, the city began to develop east
of the Boulevard de Castelnau and south of the Avenue d'Aquitaine.
This new residential area will be endowed with the Clemenceau
school, the Saint-Pierre church, the hospital and the Arago market
which will give it its name. This development will continue towards
the current Presidents' quarter.
Until the 1950s, the
municipalities of Olonne-sur-Mer and Château-d'Olonne essentially
developed around their village centers. Indeed, these two
municipalities have long maintained a rural character where economic
life is essentially marked by agriculture and crafts. The
demographic boom of the post-war period nevertheless pushes the
municipalities to build new housing estates. The district of La
Tonnelle in Olonne-sur-Mer and that of La Pironnière at the Castle
were built respectively in 1957 and 1959 in the immediate vicinity
of the city of Les Sables and not around the historic town centers.
From the 1960s, the city will then continue to expand over the two
peripheral municipalities with the Charcot city in 1965, the Olonnes
Tour, the Haven of La Mérinière in 1971, the hamlet of Moinardes in
1973, the city of La Gillerie then the village of la Paillolière in
1977. In Château-d'Olonne, the land located between the town center
and the Nouettes district has also gradually been urbanized over the
past decades, as has the southern part of the city, between the
Talmont road and the coastline. These two municipalities will also
make the choice of the development of the individual house habitat
because of the important land reserve available on their territory.
Among the few large residential housing developments built in the
1960s, we can mention: the Aubépines residence (1961), the Mill city
(1963) or the Charcot city (1965).
This rapid expansion
pushes the three municipalities to create in 1964 an intercommunal
union with multiple vocation (Sivom) in order to work together on
several projects necessary for their development. Among these
projects, we can note the creation of the activity areas of
Fruchardières in 1968 and Plesses in 1978, numerous schools
(schools, public colleges and high schools) or the vast sports area
of Chirons in 1975. For greater efficiency, this SIVOM will be
replaced in 1994 by the Community of Communes of Olonnes. In the
1980s, the idea of merging the three municipalities made its way
among citizens who decided to group together within the Arepo
association (Association for the reunification and expansion of the
Pays des Olonnes). A study presented in 2009 by KPMG concluding that
a merger is necessary reignites the debate. The election or
re-election of municipal lists openly in favor of the merger during
the municipal elections of 2008 and 2014 will then give a boost to
the merger. In 2017, the community of municipalities merges with
that of Auzance and Vertonne to form the community of agglomeration
of Sables-d'Olonne, then it is the turn of the three municipalities
of Olonnes to merge in 2019.
The neighboring municipalities are Bretignolles-sur-Mer,
Brem-sur-Mer, L'Île-d'Olonne, Saint-Mathurin, Sainte-Foy and
Talmont-Saint-Hilaire.
The municipal territory of Les
Sables-d'Olonne covers 8,607 hectares. The altitude levels of the new
municipality fluctuate between 0 and 59 meters.
The new
municipality brings together the municipalities of Château-d'Olonne,
Olonne-sur-Mer and Sables-d'Olonne, which become delegated
municipalities on January 1, 2019 and which are deleted by decision of
the municipal council of February 4, 2019.
The capital of the new commune, Les Sables-d'Olonne, is located in the center-west of the Vendée Department4, on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.
It is bordered to the north by the Auzance, a coastal river that flows into the Atlantic Ocean at the port of La Gachère, as well as, to the east, by a tributary, the Vertonne. These two rivers feed the Olonne marsh.
In 2010, the climate of the municipality is of the altered 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.
For
the period 1971-2000, the average annual temperature is 12.8 ° C, with
an annual thermal amplitude of 13.1 ° C. The average annual cumulative
rainfall is 780 mm, with 12.4 days of precipitation in January and 6.1
days in July. For the period 1991-2020, the annual average temperature
observed on the meteorological station installed in the municipality is
13.2 ° C and the average annual cumulative rainfall is 746.7 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.
Les Sables-d'Olonne 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
Sables-d'Olonne, a monocommunal urban unit with 48,402 inhabitants in
2021, constituting an isolated town.
In addition, the town is
part of the Sables-d'Olonne attraction area, of which it is the
town-center. This area, which includes 9 municipalities, is categorized
into areas of 50,000 to less than 200,000 inhabitants.
The
municipality, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, is also a coastal
municipality within the meaning of the law of January 3, 1986, called
the coastal law. Specific urban planning provisions therefore apply in
order to preserve natural spaces, sites, landscapes and the ecological
balance of the coastline, such as the principle of unconstructibility,
outside urbanized spaces, on the coastal strip of 100 meters, or more if
the local urban planning plan provides for it.
Road lanes
from Paris by the A11, via Le Mans, Angers, and by the
A87 via Cholet, La Roche-sur-Yon to Les Sables ;
from La Rochelle via
Luçon by the D 949 ;
from Saint-Nazaire via Pornic, Beauvoir-sur-Mer,
Saint-Jean-de-Monts, Saint-Gilles-Croix-de-Vie, Brem-sur-Mer, la
Girvière ;
from Challans via Aiguillon-sur-Vie, Vairé and
Olonne-sur-Mer.
Rail transport
The town is served by the
Sables-d'Olonne station which hosts daily TER Pays de la Loire trains,
to or from Nantes or La Roche-sur-Yon, and a TER "beach train" set up in
2013 from or to Saumur via Bressuire running in the summer from May to
September. The town is also served by daily TGV trains to or from
Paris-Montparnasse, via Nantes and La Roche-sur-Yon. The first TGV
trains to arrive at Les Sables-d'Olonne are hauled by diesel engines
while the Nantes - La Roche-sur-Yon - Les Sables-d'Olonne line is
electrified. The towed TGV trains were replaced by TER trains from 2004
to 2008, when the TGV was reintroduced thanks to the electrification of
the line. It is also served by the Olonne-sur-Mer train station which is
served by the TER Pays de la Loire making a connection between Nantes -
La Roche-sur-Yon - Les Sables-d'Olonne.
Air transport
By
private plane to the Sables-d'Olonne-Talmont airfield and to the
Roche-sur-Yon - Les Ajoncs airfield.
By airliner, Nantes-Atlantique
and La Rochelle-Île-de-Ré airports.
Port
The Sables-d'Olonne
lighthouse is located on the western embankment at the entrance to the
port (La Chaume), with Saint-Nicolas Priory in the background.
The harbor channel can be seen from the Thatch, with the entrance to
Port Olona in the background and that of the commercial and fishing port
on the right.
Les Sables-d'Olonne is a city turned towards the
sea, which translates into the presence of three ports :
the
fishing port, fourth in France, artisanal fishing (soles, cuttlefish,
cod ...) ;
the commercial port ;
the marinas, Port Olona, hosts
many nautical events, the most prestigious of which is the Vendée Globe
and Port Garnier (right of way over the fishing port).
The port of
Les Sables-d'Olonne has several lighthouses and beacons that mark the
entrance channel: the Armandèche lighthouse, the Potence lighthouse, the
Barges lighthouse, the Saint-Nicolas Pier lighthouse (or Grande-Pier)
and the Chaume lighthouse also known as Arundel Tower.
The Olonne
basin hosts many shipyards including Alubat, Kirié, Privilège Marine,
Océa and Tresco.
Fishing boats registered in Les Sables-d'Olonne have the LS code, according to the list of maritime districts.
Oléane bus at the Hôtel-de-Ville stop, the terminus of most lines.
Berthing of the Ferryman line C at the Grande-Jetée.
The
Sables-d'Olonne site has, within the Sables-d'Olonne-Agglomeration, a
public transport network called Oléane, formerly Tusco (for Urban
transport of Sables-d'Olonne, Château-d'Olonne and Olonne-sur-Mer),
operating 8 urban bus lines, The bus ticket valid for 1 hour is priced
at 1 € 50. Many cards and subscriptions exist.
The city also has
three maritime shuttle lines (pedestrians and cyclists) serving three
landing stages in the port (6 in summer). The smuggler is free for
residents; the passage is € 1.10 for foreigners. Here again, maps are
available, reducing the cost of the passage.
From 1898 to 1925,
the city benefited from the services of the tramway des Sables-d'Olonne,
an electric tramway which ran on the embankment and which, over a
distance of six kilometers, connected the casinos to the station. The
bad management of the company founded by the director of the Grand
Casino will make abandon this mode of transport.