Wine’s world capital also ranks second in French monuments
Bordeaux on the Garonne is Nouvelle-Aquitaine’s capital and a wine capital hosting Vinexpo among hillside châteaux. After Paris it holds France’s most listed historic monuments—over 362—and UNESCO inscribed its Port of the Moon in June 2007.
Around 300 BC the Celtic Bituriges Vivisci settled here and called the town Burdigala. In 107 BC local Gauls defeated a Roman army nearby and killed the consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, but by about 60 BC Rome ruled, and the town grew rich trading tin and lead. Vandals sacked it in 276 and again in 409, followed by Visigoths and Franks, and in 732 Umayyad troops stormed its walls before the Battle of Poitiers.
Its golden age began when Eleanor of Aquitaine married Henry II, who soon became king of England. Tax-free trade with England made wine the city’s fortune, and Bordeaux remained English until the Battle of Castillon in 1453, having briefly been the capital of the Black Prince’s own state from 1362 to 1372. It set up a local parliament in 1462.
In the 18th century its port shipped coffee, sugar, cocoa, indigo, and cotton to most of Europe, making it France’s busiest and second only to London worldwide; perhaps 5,000 buildings in the centre date from then. The wealth had a dark side: Bordeaux shipowners carried 150,000 Africans into slavery on some 500 voyages, and Haiti’s independence in 1804 wrecked the colonial trade. During the Terror, revolutionaries briefly renamed it Commune-Franklin.
Today 267,991 people live in the city proper, with 1.43 million in the metropolitan area, sixth in France. Beyond wine, it is a hub for aerospace firms such as Dassault and Safran, houses one of only two megajoule lasers in the world, and has more than 130,000 students.
Source: Bordeaux
