Even arriving by train, you’re plunged straight into maritime La Rochelle. 1920s murals adorning the interior of the monumental stone railway station depict galleons at anchor in the bay. Ten minutes walk away is the real life update, thousands of private yachts at their moorings in the leisure port of Les Minimes, enlarged last year to become one of the five biggest in the world.
The ranks of sleek white craft spill over into the Vieux Port, where the café terraces and broad stone paved quaysides seeth with tourists in summer.
The narrow channel heading into the old port is still guarded by the twin sixteenth century round towers between which a massive chain could close off the entrance, beside a third edifice, the Lantern Tower, standing just as it did when described by Rabelais in his 1532 best-seller Pantagruel.
At the foot of the towers, the 1947 brasserie of the Bar Andre, whose plateaux de fruits de mer Rabelais would have loved, may not be quite as historic, but is more useful, and more jolly with its extravagant marine decor.
Just inland from the quays, behind the ornately sculpted medieval Gate of the Grosse Horloge, colonnaded streets of grey-white mansions and shops and polished flagstone pavements testify to the wealth generated by a millenium of ship-building, banking, despatching emigrants and trading in salt, wheat, wine, slaves, and furs.
Only an unfortunate Rochelais tendency to back the losing side in events such as the Wars of Religion has restricted the wealth of historic buildings in the city. In 1627 Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu besieged and sacked the defiantly Protestant city, so that few buildings preceding that date remain in the historic centre. Well but not excessively preserved and maintained, it’s still a delight to stroll around.