La ville de la ROCHELLE | Français COURANT + sous-titres et transcription PDF.

Hello and welcome to the Fluidity podcast, episode 132. This city, known for its softness of life, is in the top 10 of the most visited in France by tourists from all over the world. It is a large port and a beautiful seaside resort, which is seduced by its architecture and its modernity. I'm going to tell you about La Rochelle. We will see its very charged history, thanks to which it played an essential role in the development of France. I will explain to you how almost all of its population was killed a few centuries ago. We will also talk about tourist attractions, but for that, stay tuned. Before starting, I would like to talk to you about our VIP club. It is my Patreon page where you have the material to study my content and become better in French. For example, for each content I make, you have exclusive bonuses such as the vocabulary list, bilingual transcriptions, the audio version, and you receive the content before the public. So everything to promote your immersion. 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Let's start with the geographical situation of La Rochelle, as every time we talk about a city. It is located on the Atlantic coast of France, so all to the west of the country. Vertically speaking, it is in the middle of the country, but a little further south. So we can say that it is a city from the southwest. It is the prefecture of its department, the Charente-Maritime, which is part of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. In terms of inhabitants, it has a little less than 80,000 Rochelais and Rochelaises, that's how we call them. So it's a medium-sized city. In the 10th century, La Rochelle was a small fishing village and it was from the Middle Ages that it began to develop thanks to its opening to the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, it was in the 12th century that the old port was built there to replace the old one, which became too small to handle the explosion of maritime trade. La Rochelle becomes a large shopping mall where local products such as wine or salt are exchanged with Northern Europe, but also textiles and fabrics. At that time, it was the largest port in the Kingdom of France. The city is very prosperous and is greatly enriched thanks to this maritime trade. They built beautiful arcades for merchants in the streets and built the Hôtel de Ville, one of the most beautiful in France and a tourist attraction. As a result, due to its economic potential and its strategic position on the ocean, La Rochelle will be very disputed between the French and the English, especially during the Hundred Years' War in the 13th century. In a few years, it alternately belonged to the Kingdom of England or the Kingdom of France. It passed many times between the hands of the two kingdoms. It was during this period that fortifications, a wall and towers were built to protect it from these different invasions. Today, there are three left that can be seen on the old port. The Tower of the Lantern, the St. Nicholas Tower and the Tower of the Chain, which have become the symbols of La Rochelle. We now come to the Renaissance, a period of religious wars, of which La Rochelle will suffer enormously. As early as 1530, Protestantism settles in the port city and it becomes the Republic of the Protestants. But it does not please the Kingdom of Catholic France at all, which will do everything it can to bend the city and thus make the Protestants capitulate, allied with the English. The city will be besieged several times by France and the last siege of 1628, ordered by the king and commanded by Richelieu, will massacre three quarters of the city's population. La Rochelle falls and goes from more than 20,000 inhabitants to less than 6,000, a real massacre, a hecatomb. After this tragic episode, its very reputable and very effective port will allow La Rochelle to recover economically and rebuild itself thanks to triangular colonial trade, a horrible passage in the history of the world. From the 17th century and up to 1792, more than 400 boat expeditions left La Rochelle for Africa to then sell the slaves to the colonies of America in exchange for goods that returned to Europe. At the end of the 19th century, to welcome larger boats, another large port was built, the Palais, which will explode La Rochelle's trade, thus becoming the 6th port of France. Today, La Rochelle is a growing city and attracts more and more people in all sectors, whether economic or tourist. It is an ecological, innovative, dynamic, sunny, safe city, and above all, it is a seaside resort. In the early 2020s, it was even ranked the 3rd city where there is good life in France. For example, it was in La Rochelle that there were the first free-service urban bikes in 1976, but also the first free-service cars in 1999, long before Paris. In the city, you can also move in autonomous minibuses, which means without a driver. La Rochelle attracts many events each year, such as the World Diving Championship since L'Une des Tours, or the French Folk Music Festival. It has one of the largest European aquariums, which houses 12,000 animals. It also has interesting museums, such as the Musée des Beaux-Arts, or the Museum of the New World, which traces back to the time of colonial trade. Many markets will offer you good local products, such as the city hall, open every day. The Gabu district is very charming to see, it is an old fishing district, transformed into a small Scandinavian-style house.