Rennes
— the half-timber the great fire spared.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Brittany, just inland from the Atlantic. A medieval centre of leaning half-timbered houses on Rue Saint-Michel and Place du Champ-Jacquet, a granite cathedral, and the Parlement de Bretagne behind its long facade. Saturday morning, the Marché des Lices fills the square with oysters from Cancale, salted butter, and galettes folded in paper. By evening the lanes hum with students and the bars stay warm.
Rennes, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Rennes is the capital of Brittany, in the far west of metropolitan France, about 350 km west of Paris and 70 km inland from the Atlantic coast at Saint-Malo. The Ille and the Vilaine rivers meet inside the city. Roughly 220,000 people live in the commune, and another 450,000 in the broader metropolitan area. The historic core sits on the north bank of the Vilaine, around the Cathédrale Saint-Pierre and the Place des Lices. The University of Rennes, founded in 1735, gives the city its young population.
Rennes carries two architectures braided together. The medieval city has about 280 surviving half-timbered houses in oak and chestnut, leaning over the lanes around Rue Saint-Michel and Place du Champ-Jacquet. Alongside it stands the granite-and-tufa city rebuilt after the great fire of December 1720, which destroyed roughly a third of the centre over six days. The reconstruction plan by Isaac Robelin and Jacques Gabriel imposed straight stone streets and neoclassical facades. The Parlement de Bretagne, finished in 1655 and itself burned in 1994, survived the 1720 fire.
Rennes runs on a steady calendar. The Marché des Lices fills Place des Lices and Place du Bas-des-Lices every Saturday morning, with around 300 vendors, one of the largest open-air food markets in France. The Trans Musicales festival arrives in early December and has launched bands since 1976. Les Tombées de la Nuit, in early July, fills the streets with open-air theatre and music. The cathedral keeps Catholic feasts; the university year shapes the rhythm of the bars on Rue Saint-Michel from October through May.