The story of this place
The mighty Château des ducs de Bretagne, seat of the dukes who ruled Brittany as a near-independent realm, was the birthplace of Duchess Anne of Brittany, who by marrying two successive French kings brought her duchy into France around 1500. Its most consequential moment came in 1598, when King Henry IV signed the Edict of Nantes here, ending decades of savage religious civil war by granting French Protestants (Huguenots) substantial freedom of worship—a landmark of religious tolerance, until Louis XIV cruelly revoked it in 1685. The castle later served as barracks and prison; Nantes's role as a major slave-trading port is confronted in the museum now housed within its granite walls.