Paris
Notre-Dame de Paris
Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie
Argonaute (S636)
Argonaute is an Aréthuse -class sous-marin de chasse, in service with the Marine Nationale from 1959 to 1982 and preserved as a museum ship at CSI from 1987 onwards.
Musée Albert Khan
The Musée Albert Khan is a departmental museum of the Hauts-de-Seine which contains the late Albert Khan's "Les Archives de la Planète" photography project along with four acres of internationally themed landscape gardens. Les Archives de la Planète consists of over 183,000 metres of film and 72,000 photographs from 50 countries, taken from 1908 to 1931. The collection includes many autochrome process color photographs, making it one of the only major examples of this unique type.
Saint-Nazaire
Forme Ecluse Louis Joubert
The Normandie drydock was the primary target of the British commando raid "Operation Chariot", as it was the largest drydock in Europe and it was hoped that destruction of the dock would force the Kriegsmarine to withdraw the battleship KMS Tirpitz.
Submarine Base
The U-boat base at Saint-Nazaire is the best-known of the five major submarine facilities built by the Nazis in occupied France. The base consists of a single massive bunker built by Organization Todt forced labor from February 1941 to June 1942; it contains fourteen individual U-boat pens (eight drydock and six tandem wet dock), plus crew dormitories and a comprehensive array of workshops and support facilities. 6. Unterseebootsflottille "Hundius" and 7. Unterseebootsflottille "Wegener" were based here, both initially equipped with Type IXA U-boats and then with a mix of Type VIIB, VIIC, and VIIC⁄41 U-boats.
After the war, the base was deemed far too robust to be safely demolished and was left largely abandoned until 1994 when the city initiated the Ville-Port redevelopment project.
Fortified Lock
In 1943, the Nazis initiated construction of a fortified lock on the other side of the harbor basin from the U-boat base to reduce the vulnerability of U-boats entering and exiting the base. This structure is 150 metres long, 25 metres wide, and 15 metres high, with an internal draft of 7 metres. There were four 20mm anti-aircraft gun positions on the roof plus a heavy machine gun emplacement covering the east side.
From 1987 onwards, the fortified lock has been utilized to house the museum ship Espadon. In addition, as of late 2023 Saint-Nazaire was soliciting proposals to develop the roof of the fortified lock as an outdoor "cultural, festive and recreational venue".
Espadon (S637)
Espadon is a Narval-class sous-marin de chasse, in service with the Marine Nationale from 1960 to 1986. The Narval class were France's first post-WWII submarines and ranked among the most advanced designs of the era, making extensive use of technology from Roland Morillot (S613 ⁄ U-2518), a German Type XXI U-Boat which was taken as a war prize.
Escal'Atlantic
Escal'Atlantic is an ocean liner museum containing a large-scale mockup of a liner and numerous artifacts from SS Normandie and SS France.
Chantiers de l'Atlantique
Chantiers de l'Atlantique is one of the largest shipyards in the world, founded in 1861 as Ateliers et Chantiers de Saint-Nazaire Penhoët. This yard produced many of the world's most notable ocean liners, including the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique's SS France, SS Île de France, and SS Normandie. More recently, it built the word's only modern ocean liner, the RMS Queen Mary 2 for the Cunard Line. Chantiers de l'Atlantique is also one of France's primary naval shipyards, along with the Direction des Constructions Navales (now "Naval Group") yard in Brest.
Bordeaux
Cathédrale-Primatiale Saint-André de Bordeaux
Basilique Saint-Seurin de Bordeaux
Basilique Saint-Michel de Bordeaux
U-Boat Base
The U-boat base at Bordeaux is significantly smaller than the one at Saint-Nazaire, measuring "only" 245 metres long by 162 metres deep and 19 metres high. It contains eleven pens, of which eight were drydocks and three regular docks. 12. Unterseebootsflottille was based here, operating primarily Type XIV "Milchkuh" supply U-boats.
Toulouse
Basilica de Sant-Sarnin
The Basilica de Sant-Sarnin is the former abbey church of the Abbey of Sant-Sernin, built in the late eleventh century to replace a fourth century predecessor. Part of the traditional Camino de Santiago -- one of the three "great pilgrimages" of Europe -- it is the largest surviving Romanesque building on the continent.
Canal du Midi
Musée Saint-Raymond
Musée Aeroscopia
The Musée Aeroscopia is a private aerospace museum which opened in 2015 and then expanded in 2020 to accomodate an Airbus A380.
Carcasonne
The earliest settlements in the Carcasonne region date to around 3500 BC, with the hill of Carcas becoming a trading site of notable size and importance by the 6th century BC. The Romans fortified it in 100 BC, originally naming the fortified town "Julia Carsaco" and later "Carcasum". It was conquered by the Visigoths in 453 AD, and the Romans formally ceded the entire Septimania region to them in 462 AD.
Modern day Carcasonne is the prefecture of the Aude department.
Aire du Belvédère
Cité de Carcassonne
The Cité de Carcassonne is a Roman castellum (fortified town) dating back to the 3rd century. The fortifications were expanded during the Visigoth occupation of the 5th and 6th centuries, and then again during the Middle Ages, most notably in 1120 under Vicomte Bernard Aton IV Trencavel. The Cité fell during the Albigensian Crusade and changed hands several times, ultimately becoming a royal domain after a second crusade in 1226. The final expansion of the city fortifications occurred at that time, and those final fortifications were restored by the famous architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc starting in 1853.
Château Comtal
Basilique des Saints Nazaire et Celse
Cathédrale Saint-Michel de Carcassonne
Montpellier
Founded in the Early Middle Ages after the destruction of the prior major city of the region (Maguelone), Montpellier was part of Aragon and then Majorca before the border region was sold to France in 1349. It is the departmental prefecture of Hérault and one of the largest and fastest-growing cities of the Occitania region (formerly Languedoc).