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ROCHEFORT DOWNTOWN CAR RENTAL |
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Rochefort Downtown car rental - Travel Guide |
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ROCHEFORT dates from the seventeenth century, when it was created by Colbert, Louis XIII's navy minister, to protect the coast from English raids. It remained an important naval base until modern times with its shipyards, sail-makers, munitions factories and hospital. Built on a grid plan with regular ranks of identical houses, the town is a monument to the tidiness of the military mind, but is not without charm for all that. The central place Colbert is very pretty and the nearby rue Courbet is exactly as the seventeenth century left it, complete with lime trees and cobblestones brought from Canada as ships' ballast. The seventeenth-century warehouse buildings and old arsenal as yet are unrestored and cannot be visited, but there are still some sights worth making a special effort for.
Many of the towns along the pretty surrounding coastline are served by the Aunis and Saintonge buses, although you will find the simplest solution to travelling along this whole section of coast is renting a car or even cycling. Unless you have your own transport, Rochefort is a useless base for nearby Royan or the Île d'Oléron. Bus times are inconvenient and buses to Oléron generally involve a wait at Boucrefranc.
The Town
If you have a taste for the bizarre, then there's one good reason for visiting Rochefort - the house of the novelist Julien Viaud, alias Pierre Loti. Forty years a naval officer, he wrote numerous best-selling romances with exotic oriental settings and characters. The Maison Pierre Loti , at 141 rue Pierre-Loti (guided tours every 20min: July-Sept Mon-Sat 10-11am & 2-5pm, Sun 2-5pm; rest of year Mon & Wed-Sat 10-11am & 2-4pm; closed Dec 20-Jan 20 & public hols; 45F/?6.86), is part of a row of modestly proportioned grey-stone houses, outwardly a model of petit-bourgeois conformity and respectability, inside an outrageous and fantastical series of rooms decorated to exotic themes. There's a medieval banqueting hall complete with Gothic fireplace and Gobelin tapestries; a monastery refectory with windows pinched from a ruined abbey; a Damascus mosque; and a Turkish room, with kilim wall-hangings and a ceiling made from an Alhambra mould. To suit the mood of the place, Loti used to throw extravagant parties: a medieval banquet with swan's meat and hedgehog and a fête chinoise with the guests in costumes he had brought back from China, where he took part in the suppression of the Boxer rebellion.
Also worth a quick look is the Centre International de la Mer (daily 9am-6/8pm; 30F/?4.57) situated in the Corderie Royale, or the royal ropeworks, off rue Toufaire. At 372m, the Corderie is the longest building in France and a rare and splendid example of seventeenth-century industrial architecture, substantially restored after damage in World War II. From 1660 until the Revolution, it furnished the entire French navy with rope, and the building now houses an appropriate exhibition on ropes and rope-making, including machinery from the nineteenth century. If you don't fancy visiting the museum, it's definitely worth a wander around the extensive building and its lawns along the River Charente, whose reed-fringed banks support a garden made up of plants brought back from long-forgotten expeditions overseas. One such, financed by Michel Bégon, quartermaster of Rochefort in 1688, brought back the flower we know as the begonia. The small harbor, the Bassin Laperouse, next to the Corderie, is also worth a stroll.
If you're interested in finding out more about the town's history and naval importance, head for the Musée d'Art et d'Histoire , 63 av Charles-de-Gaulle (July & Aug daily 1.30-7pm; rest of year Tues-Sat 1.30-5.30pm; 10F/?1.52), and the Musée de la Marine (daily except Tues 10am-noon & 2-6pm; closed mid-Oct to mid-Nov; 29F/?4.42), in the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Cheusses on place de la Gallossinnière, which houses an excellent collection of model ships, figureheads, navigational instruments and other naval paraphernalia. One other attractive small museum is the Musée des Métiers de Mercure at 12 rue Lessan, which displays lovingly and authentically reconstructed shop interiors from the beginning of the twentieth century (July & Aug daily 10am-8pm; rest of year daily except Tues 10am-noon & 2-7pm; 30F/?4.57). |
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OPENING HOURS |
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| MIAMI(EST) |
Mon - Fri: 06:00 - 18:00 |
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Sat - Sun: 06:00 - 12:00 |
| LONDON (GMT) |
Mon - Fri 08:00 - 23:00 |
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Sat - Sun: 08:00 - 16:00 |
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| 1. UK |
0800 0789054 |
| 2. USA |
1 866 735 1715 |
| 3. AUSTRALIA |
1 800 210813 |
| 4. FRANCE |
0805 100863 |
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