About this site, and about me
I am Maël Guérin. I grew up three streets from the Château des ducs de Bretagne, in the Bouffay quarter, and I still cross the moat gardens most mornings. This site exists because of one fact almost nobody arrives in Nantes knowing: the courtyard and the 500-metre rampart walk are free, seven days a week, and the only thing you pay for is the low-cost museum inside.
Who I am
I spent five seasons walking visitors around Nantes before going freelance. In that time I watched the same thing happen every Monday between September and June: people arrive at 4 place Marc Elder, find the museum closed, assume the castle is closed, photograph the drawbridge and leave. They were fifty metres from a free walk along the top of a fifteenth-century curtain wall, with seven towers on it, and nobody told them. That is the gap this site is trying to close. The opening hours page says it in plain numbers.
What I write about
What a visit costs, what is free, how long each part takes, and which of the five GetYourGuide tours in Nantes is worth its price. I am not the château and I am not Nantes Tourisme. The official site is chateaunantes.fr, and if you want to buy a museum ticket direct, that is where you go. I sell nothing. I compare things, and I say when something is not worth your money — the city pass on a single slow day, for instance, or a five-star rating built on three reviews.
How I decide what to recommend
Ratings and review counts come from GetYourGuide and I print both, because a 4.2 from 365 people means more than a 5.0 from seven. Prices at the château come from the château. When a tour and a museum ticket do the same job, I say so on the tickets page rather than hiding it. Everything I have written about the five tours is on the reviews hub, sample sizes included.
How the site is funded
Affiliate commission from GetYourGuide when someone books through a link here, at no extra cost to the person booking. That is the whole business model, and it is set out in full on the affiliate disclosure. It does not decide what I recommend, for the obvious reason that a guide who talks people into the wrong tour stops being read.
Corrections are welcome and I would rather have them early. Write to me.