Every design for Cholet

Three Neolithic standing stones still survive within Cholet, and one of them, the Grand menhir de la Garde, was moved into the Jardin du Mail in the town centre. The first mention of a castle here goes back to the eleventh century, but the town's fortune came later, when a brother of Jean-Baptiste Colbert brought weavers to settle and the textile trade took hold.

Cholet stands on a rise above the right bank of the Moine, in the south-western corner of Anjou, where Maine-et-Loire meets the Vendée, the Deux-Sèvres and the Loire-Atlantique. That borderland position put it at the heart of the counter-revolutionary struggle in the Vendée, and many people still assume it belongs to that department. It is the second town of Maine-et-Loire after Angers, and the centre of the Mauges.

The Musée du Textile et de la Mode tells the story of the looms and of the red handkerchief that made Cholet the handkerchief capital. Wearing this map is a small nod to that red square of cloth and the weavers behind it.