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Saintes

File:File-Panorama_Saintes-b.JPG · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

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Saintes

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

commune in Charente-Maritime, France

OverviewAI-generated

Saintes is a commune in France, situated in the Charente-Maritime department within the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. It serves as the capital of the arrondissement of Saintes, the canton of Saintes-Ouest, and the canton of Saintes-Est. The town has a population of 26,891 and covers an area of 45.55 square kilometers. Its official name is listed as Saintes, Xantes, and it shares borders with Bussac-sur-Charente, Chaniers, Chermignac, and Écurat.

The municipality is twinned with Xanten, Salisbury, Nivelles, and Timbuktu. Saintes is located at an elevation of 81 meters above sea level. The local postal code is 17100.

Synthesized by Vinony from 56 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Openweathermap, Open Meteo, OpenStreetMap, GeoNames, Firecrawl, Vinony graph, Geo. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Weather now

cached 8h ago
14°broken clouds
92% 2.2 m/s OpenWeatherMap

7-day forecast

via Open-Meteo

Place details

Locality
Saintes
Region
Nouvelle-Aquitaine
Country
France
Population
29,512
Timezone
Europe/Paris

via OpenStreetMap · GeoNames

Air quality

51US AQIModerate
PM2.5
11.3 µg/m³
PM10
14.4 µg/m³
As of 2026-08-11 02:00 · Open-Meteo

Official website

Saintes – Capitale de la Saintonge | Site officiel

Site officiel de la mairie de Saintes (Charente-Maritime). Accédez à vos démarches en ligne, suivez l'actualité municipale et explorez la vie locale.

ville-saintes.fr →

Link to the official site · 10,833 chars · not written by Vinony

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

Encyclopedic overview

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.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Saintes” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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