Bordeaux

Bordeaux curves along the tidal Garonne in a great crescent, the bend that gave the port its name, the Port de la Lune. For three centuries after Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage to Henry II the city was the English capital of Gascony, and its wine trade with England made it rich: wine from the hinterland filled the ships that sailed north every autumn. The future Richard II was born here in 1367, during the Black Prince's rule of Aquitaine. The French conquest of 1453, after the English defeat at Castillon, ended that allegiance. Charles VII built the Fort du Hâ and the Château Trompette to keep the city in check, and the parlement of 1462 made it a regional judicial capital.

Bordeaux rose in 1548 against the salt tax and was punished by the Constable de Montmorency. Michel de Montaigne served as its mayor from 1581 to 1585. In the eighteenth century wine exports and the colonial trade enriched shipowners; the sugar, coffee and indigo of Saint-Domingue, produced by enslaved workers, came up the river, and direct slave-trading voyages added profit. New avenues were opened, and the Place Royale, later the Place de la Bourse, was built from 1730. Victor Louis's Grand Théâtre opened in 1780.