Saintes

Also known as Xantes, Sentas, Santas, Sénte, Mediolanum Santonum, Xaintes

commune in Charente-Maritime, France

AI overview

Saintes is a town located in the Charente-Maritime region of western France. It is a commune, which is a basic administrative division in France similar to a municipality.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

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Place details

Locality: Saintes
Region: Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Country: France
Population: 29,512
Timezone

Travel guide

Buy

Cours National and Avenue Gambetta are the main shopping streets. The pedestrianized historical center has a lot of small specialized boutiques, especially along Rues Victor Hugo and Alsace-Lorraine.

Large supermarkets are unsurprisingly at the outskirts of the city; in the Parc Atlantique, at the Maréchal-Leclerc course, and in the Grandes Bauches, Terrefort and Fief-Mignon districts. The main shopping malls are Coteaux (around Leclerc hypermarket) and Hyper U.

Drink

thumb|Le pineau des Charentes, one of the famous drinks of the region, can be had in most bars

Stay healthy

thumb|The esplanade of the Centre hospitalier de Saintonge

Go next

thumb|La Roche-Courbon castle, about 20 km from Saintes, was called Le château de la Belle au bois dormant, "the castle of sleeping beauty" by writer Pierre Loti

thumb|The spectacular Trizay abbey

Travel guide from Wikivoyage (CC BY-SA 4.0)

~14 min read

Article

Saintes ( French: [sɛ̃t] ; Poitevin-Saintongeais: Sénte) is a commune and historic town in western France, in the Charente-Maritime department of which it is a sub-prefecture, in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Saintes is the second-largest city in Charente-Maritime, with 25,518 inhabitants in 2021. The city's immediate surroundings form the second-most populous metropolitan area in the department, with 56,598 inhabitants. While a majority of the surrounding landscape consists of fertile, productive fields, a significant minority of the region remains forested, its natural state.

In Roman times, Saintes was known as Mediolanum Santonum. During much of its history, the name of the city was spelled Xaintes or Xainctes.