Every design for Rezé

Two places that could hardly be more different put Rezé on the map: Trentemoult, the old fishing village on the banks of the Loire, and Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation, the monumental apartment block known as the Cité radieuse. Between them lies a town that grew from a semi-rural commune into a lively southern neighbour of Nantes in less than a century.

The Manoir de la Hautière belongs to that older, greener Rezé, when the land between the Loire and the Sèvre Nantaise was fields and manor houses. Long before that, this was Ratiatum, a Roman port facing the Gaulish settlement on the other bank, and later the seat of a bishopric and the capital of the Pays de Retz, which takes its name from the town. The Loire still shapes daily life: the floods that cover the low meadows, the walk along the quays, and Nantes, with Les Machines de l'île and the Maillé-Brézé, just across the water.

Wherever you moved after Rezé, you will know this stretch of the Loire on the map at once. It is yours to keep.