Things to see and do Brest

Rue Jean Jaurès is, along with Rue de Siam, one of the two most commercial arteries of the city of Brest. Linking the Place de la Liberté to the Place de Strasbourg, it is lined with shops. From fashion to restaurants, banks, hairdressers, bars and cinemas, you can easily spend your day there! Without forgetting to make a little detour to the Place Guérin and the Saint-Martin district, with its church and daily market. A piece of advice: take advantage of the tram, which serves the whole street, to get around...

Brest has a constantly changing urban fabric. The artists appropriate the walls and underline the history of the city of Le Ponant through gigantic paintings. Rue Anatole France is an example of this desire to promote art and revitalize the city's right bank. In this long street, you can admire about ten frescoes, designed and created by the Lyon muralist painters of CitéCréation, who worked in collaboration with illustrators, comic book authors and renowned architects such as Pierre-Henri Argouarch, Liliwen, Benjamin Flao, Patrice Pellerin, etc. If we can deplore the lack of commented visit of this street of Brest, we can get the paper guide " Les murs ont la parole " available at the tourist office.

Other murals are scattered all over Brest. The site www.streetart-brest.fr lists nearly 650 of them. It's up to you to lose yourself in the city with these artistic and urban winks...

Large, colourful, and always busy even under the dark clouds, the commercial port is the epicentre of Brest life. Whether you descend on foot from Cours Dajot by taking the huge stairs or take a ride in the car driving along the castle, the landscape is unique. Meeting points, the Irish pubs that are located at the entrance to the port have their rooms always full day and night. When it comes to the many restaurants which have been implanted there for a long time, their tables are constantly occupied at lunchtime. But the port is also a place of Sunday walk that is even busier since the inauguration of Marina du Château! As you walk around on the "port de co", you can enjoy some old riggings on stopover, such as the Recouvrance or the Abeille Bourbon, the impressive tugboat that is always ready to go and help ships in distress. Note: it's on its quays that, every summer, Thursday evenings are animated by the sound of "Jeudis du port", which is a free artistic event, open to all and extremely popular, in the heart of which street arts and varied concerts mix.

Spared by the Allies's bombings in 1944, Maison de la Fontaine is one of the oldest buildings in the Ponant city. Located in the heart of Recouvrance, it overlooks Penfeld beside the garden of the Explorateurs, facing the Brest castle. Bought by the municipality in 1980, it now offers numerous activities and free exhibitions, organised by the cultural service of the city, or the association des Amis de Recouvrance, initiator of its renovation in 1992. As for its name, it has nothing to do with a certain 17th century's poets. The house has its name from the fountain constructed next to it in 1760. It later became the residence of the most prestigious sculptor (Yves Collet) that this group has ever known: A permanent exhibition is devoted to him in the basement, between the walls of the original fountain. Note that the cross on the gable comes from the Noyés graveyard, which was in this same place until the seventeenth century.