Archaeology handicrafts and science and technology sites to visit Châteaubriant

A soil rich in iron ore, a territory covered by forests and water favored the birth of metallurgy in the country of Châteaubriant in the seventeenth century. The Hunaudière forges, the site of La Forge Neuve… the beautiful houses of the master are the nostalgic remains of an industry that knows its apogee in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the invention of the forged forge in English competition the metallurgy to wood. The use of coke in blast furnaces and the appearance of steel sound like the ice. In 1884 the last furnace, that of the Hunaudière, ceased its activity.