Rochefort, Charente-Maritime

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Administration
Commune of Rochefort The harbour of Rochefort
Location
Coordinates	45°56'34" N 00°57'57" W
Country	France
Region	Poitou-Charentes
Department	Charente-Maritime (sous-préfecture)
Arrondissement	Rochefort
Canton	Chief town of 13 cantons
Intercommunality	Communauté d'agglomération du Pays Rochefortais
Mayor	Bernard Grasset (2001-2008)
Statistics
Elevation	0 m–29 m (avg. 5 m)
Land area^¹	21.95 km²
Population^² (1999)	25,797
- Density	1,175/km² (1999)
Miscellaneous
INSEE/Postal code	17299/ 17300
¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.
² Population sans doubles comptes: single count of residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel).

Rochefort is a commune in western France, a seaport on the Atlantic Ocean. It is a sous-préfecture of the Charente-Maritime département.

1 History
2 Miscellaneous
- 2.1 Births
- 2.2 Town Twinning
3 See also
4 External links

Traditional blazon of Rochefort

In December 1665 Rochefort was chosen by Jean-Baptiste Colbert as a place of "refuge, defense and supply" for the French navy. Its military harbour was fortified by Louis XIV's commissary of fortifications Vauban. Between 1666-1669 the king had the "Corderie Royale" (then the longest building in Europe) constructed to make cordage for French ships of war. The making of cordage ceased in 1867, and in 1926 the arsenal of Rochefort was closed. The building was burned by occupation forces in 1944 and left abandoned for twenty years. Today it has been restored for municipal and tourist purposes. Another infrastructure of early Rochefort from 1766 was its bagne, a high-security penal colony involving hard labour. Bagnes were then common fixtures in military harbours and naval bases, such as Toulon or Brest, because they provided free labour.

Off Rochefort, from the island of Île-d'Aix where he had spent several days hoping to flee to America, Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered to Captain F. L. Maitland aboard HMS Bellerophon, on July 17, 1815, ending the "Hundred Days".

Rochefort is a notable example of 17th-century "ville nouvelle" or new town, which means its design and building resulted from a political decree. The reason for building Rochefort was to a large extent that royal power could hardly depend on rebellious Protestant La Rochelle, which Cardinal Richelieu had to besiege a few decades earlier. Well into the 20th century, Rochefort remained primarily a garrison town. The tourist industry, which had long existed due to the town's spa, gained emphasis in the 1990s.

The town gained some fleeting fame with Jacques Demy's musical movie Les demoiselles de Rochefort (The Young Girls of Rochefort) (1967), starring Catherine Deneuve, her sister Françoise Dorléac, Gene Kelly and George Chakiris (Bernardo from West Side Story).

It is home to a unique style of bridge called a Transporter bridge, (built 1900) named Pont transbordeur de Rochefort.[1]