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Offered languages
- German
- Portuguese
- English
- Italian
- French
- Dutch
- Spanish
Inside a grand merchant mansion sits a bronze tribute to an enslaved man born on the island that enriched this city. The mayor framed it as La Rochelle making peace with its past. Beyond the postcard-perfect harbour and its iconic twin towers lies a deeper story: as one of France’s major slave-trading ports, this audio tour invites you to explore both sides of its history.
This self-guided audio walking tour of La Rochelle follows a harbour that shipped salt and wine out as white gold, then grew fat on the triangular slave trade. You'll stand where a mayor drove his dagger into the council table rather than surrender, trace a Templar fleet that vanished one night with its treasure, and meet a ruined merchant whose lost ships came home laden with gold.
Press play at 19 stops. Walk at your own pace, no fixed start time, no group to follow, with offline audio in your choice of language.
Over 25,000 travelers have used our self-guided tours, and every tour comes with a refund guarantee.
What's Included
Meeting and pickup
This is a self-guided audio tour on the "Tourific self-guided tours" app. To activate the tour, check your email for instructions from Tourific or your booking platform sent right after booking. Can't find it? Search for "Tourific" in your email inbox and spam folder OR contact us via support.
Itinerary
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Chain Tower (Pass by)
Stand at the tower that sealed the harbour shut, until the day it blew its own roof off
Admission ticket free -
1
Look out over the water where a cardinal built a mile of stone to starve a city
12 minutes • Admission ticket free -
2Porte de la Grosse-Horloge
Pass beneath the grand clock tower that began life as the city's most guarded gateway
8 minutes • Admission ticket free -
3
Step into the Templar compound whose treasure fleet slipped out one night and was never found
8 minutes • Admission ticket free -
4Saint Saviour Church of La Rochelle
Find the single tower that survived every fire, siege, and demolition this church suffered
10 minutes • Admission ticket free -
5
Encounter the faith this whole city was punished for, and a pulpit built to vanish
10 minutes • Admission ticket free -
La Rochelle Town Hall (Pass by)
Uncover the council table a starving mayor stabbed sooner than let anyone say surrender
Admission ticket free -
6Maison Henri II
Notice the magnificent facade hiding almost no house at all behind its carved stone
6 minutes • Admission ticket free -
(Pass by)
Pause at an ordinary door concealing a war bunker the size of a house
Admission ticket free -
7
Follow your nose into the covered market for oysters, mussels, and potatoes worth their own appellation
12 minutes • Admission ticket free -
New World Museum (Musee du Nouveau-Monde) (Pass by)
See where a slave-trade fortune now shares its courtyard with a freed slave cast in bronze
Admission ticket free -
8
Decode a cathedral built as revenge, right on the ground its rival once stood
12 minutes • Admission ticket free -
9Place de verdun
Cross a plain car park sitting on the buried foundations of a vanished royal castle
12 minutes • Admission ticket free -
10
Trace the street named for a merchant who begged in the gutter before his ships came home
10 minutes • Admission ticket free -
11
Count the carved heads of great physicians studding a house named for the wrong doctor
8 minutes • Admission ticket free -
12
Search the courtyard of the old merchants' exchange for the compass rose underfoot
8 minutes • Admission ticket free -
13
Walk the last cobbled street, paved with ballast stones ships hauled across the ocean
12 minutes • Admission ticket free -
(Pass by)
Read the six hundred carvings prisoners scratched into a lighthouse turned three-century jail
Admission ticket free -
14Porte des Deux Moulins
Finish at the gate in the walls a king built so this city could never rebel again
10 minutes • Admission ticket free
Additional info
- Service animals allowed
- Public transportation options are available nearby
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
Tags
Cancellation Policy
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
Cancellation Policy
- For a full refund, you must cancel at least 24 hours before the experience’s start time.
- If you cancel less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time, the amount you paid will not be refunded.
- Any changes made less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time will not be accepted.
You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance of the experience for a full refund.
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