Every design for Rennes

What makes a city the capital of Brittany? In the case of Rennes, it was the Parlement de Bretagne, the court that settled here in the sixteenth century and gave the province a measure of independence from the French crown right up to the Revolution. Its grand palace still anchors the city centre and the identity of everyone who lives around it.

Rennes is unusual in other ways too. It grew from a Gaulish village called Condate at the meeting of the Ille and the Vilaine, and it stayed largely rural until the Second World War. After a great fire in the eighteenth century destroyed the wooden medieval centre, much was rebuilt in stone, and it remains a city of art and history today. Later the city reinvented itself around telecommunications and digital technology, and for a few years it was the smallest city in the world with a metro. With tens of thousands of students, it feels young and busy, and the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre, the Opéra de Rennes and the Palais Saint-Georges form a backdrop to daily life.

Rennais who move away tend to talk about the city with a mixture of pride and longing, and when they come back to Brittany's capital, it feels as though they never left.