Angers, once the Black City of slate roofs, now calls itself the City of Flowers
Slate from a nearby quarry once darkened so many roofs in Angers that people called it the Black City. Today the old Plantagenet stronghold on the edge of the Loire Valley leads Europe in horticulture and guards the largest surviving set of medieval tapestries in the world inside its castle.
Angers lies in western France, roughly 300 kilometres southwest of Paris, and serves as prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department. Until the Revolution it was capital of the province of Anjou, and its people, like the province's, are called Angevins. The city itself has 157,555 inhabitants on 42.70 square kilometres, with about 443,900 across its wider catchment, ranking third in northwestern France after Nantes and Rennes.
Geography made it a stronghold. Three rivers from the north, the Mayenne, the Sarthe and the Loir, meet just above the city to form the Maine, a short, broad river that joins the Loire a few kilometres south. The key on the city's coat of arms recalls its role guarding the approach from Brittany, and a medieval acrostic hailed it as the ancient key to France. Angers was the cradle of the Plantagenet dynasty and, under René of Anjou, one of Europe's intellectual centres. Their massive château still dominates the medieval core and houses the Apocalypse Tapestry.
Ptolemy recorded the town around AD 150 as Juliomagus, blending the Latin Julius, probably for Caesar, with a Celtic word for market. Around AD 400 it became known after its Gallic tribe, the Andecavi, and over centuries that label wore down through forms such as Andegavis and Angiers into Angers; the same root gave Anjou its name, a double pattern also seen in Poitiers and Poitou. Under Napoleon, imperial bees replaced the royal fleurs de lys on its arms.
Nicknames trace the city's changing face: the Athens of the West for its university from the 19th century, the City of Flowers from the Second Empire, the Green City for its parks, and, with a wink at its sooty past, Angers the White for its pale tufa facades. It hosts Végépolys, Europe's leading horticultural cluster, and the headquarters of the Community Plant Variety Office, and sits beside the Val de Loire World Heritage Site.
Source: Angers
