| 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. If you want to stay in a Rochefort hotel, check this website. 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. There are some sights worth making a special effort for, including the Centre International de la Mer, located in the seventeenth-century royal arsenal and ropeworks. Many of the towns along the pretty surrounding coastline are served by the Aunis-Saintonge buses (tel 05.46.47.02.48 or 05.46.09.20.15), though 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.
Pages in section ‘Rochefort’: The Town, Arrival, information and accommodation, Eating and drinking.
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