A fire in 1720 split Rennes into a stone north and timbered south
Brittany's capital began as a Gaulish village called Condate. A blaze in 1720 gutted its wooden medieval core, and only the wealthier north was rebuilt in stone on a grid. Centuries later Rennes became a telecoms hub and, from 2002 to 2008, the smallest city on Earth with a metro.
Rennes sits in eastern Brittany where the Ille meets the Vilaine, its old centre perched on a hill that rises higher on the north side. The English Channel lies about 50 km away, near Saint-Malo and Mont Saint-Michel. The climate is oceanic but surprisingly dry for Brittany, with roughly half the rain Quimper receives, and a protected green belt separates the dense city from the rural fringe beyond its ring road.
Along with Vannes and Nantes it was one of the chief towns of the old Duchy of Brittany. Between the early 1500s and the Revolution it served the French crown as a seat of parliament, administration and garrison, and it played a notable part in the Stamped Paper Revolt of 1675. The Parlement de Bretagne, a 17th-century palace now housing the Court of Appeal, is its most famous building; it had to be rebuilt after a fire in 1994 that may have been started by a protester's flare.
The 1720 fire explains the city's two faces. The northern half, where parliamentary families built grand townhouses, rose again in stone and holds most of the protected monuments. The poorer south kept its colourful half-timbered houses along streets such as Rue du Chapitre, where a façade carries painted wooden busts from the 16th century. The Place des Lices hosts a large weekly market.
Rennes stayed largely rural until the Second World War. After the 1950s, migration from the countryside and new industry, including cars, drove rapid growth, and in the 1980s telecoms and high technology arrived. The city counted 230,890 residents in 2023, with a metropolitan area put at anywhere from nearly 750,000 to 789,516, among France's fastest growing. More than 70,000 students study there, and L'Express ranked it the country's most liveable city in 2018.
Source: Rennes
