Bordeaux

Bordeaux is a city in France. It sits beside a wide river called the Garonne.

Ships have come up the river to Bordeaux for a very long time.

Bordeaux lies on the Garonne River in southwestern France, about 100 kilometers from the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine and the center of a group of 28 towns called Bordeaux Métropole.

France's statistics office, INSEE, counted 267,991 people in the city in its 2023 census, almost the same as the 266,662 of 1968.

INSEE's historical table for the commune shows 266,662 people in 1968, a low of 208,159 in 1982 and steady growth since: 235,178 in 2007, 254,436 in 2017 and 267,991 in 2023, on about 49 km² (5,429 people per km²).

Universalis notes that Bordeaux has headed an urban community of 28 communes since 1968, which became Bordeaux Métropole in 2015, with 843,700 inhabitants, and that the city, long tied to the wine trade, has become a leading regional metropolis.

Bordeaux has a big square with grand old buildings.

In front of it is a flat, shallow pool of water. It shines like a mirror!

UNESCO calls the historic port city 'the Port of the Moon'. Its streets and squares, planned from the early 1700s onward, have more protected buildings than any French city except Paris.

The Place de la Bourse is a square of grand stone buildings, opened in 1749. In front of it lies the water mirror, a reflecting pool from 2006; in the photo, the buildings are reflected in a thin layer of water on the paving.

UNESCO inscribed 'Bordeaux, Port of the Moon' in 2007 (criteria ii and iv, 1,731 ha) as an inhabited historic city and an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble of the Age of Enlightenment, with more protected buildings than any other French city except Paris. It praises the 'exceptional urban and architectural unity and coherence' of its classical and neoclassical plans from the early 18th century.

Universalis lists the monuments of that golden age: the place Royale, the facade of the quays, the avenues and the Grand-Théâtre. Wikidata dates the square to 1749, the theater's opening to 7 April 1780 and the water mirror to 2006.

For hundreds of years, Bordeaux has traded with other countries.

It also has a grand old theater from 1780.

UNESCO says Bordeaux has been a place where cultures met and exchanged ideas for more than 2,000 years, especially through its trade with Britain and the Low Countries since the 1100s. Universalis says its history is tied above all to the wine trade, and that it has become a leading regional city.

The Grand-Théâtre, one of the monuments of the 18th-century golden age, opened in 1780.

UNESCO recognizes Bordeaux's role 'as a place of exchange of cultural values over more than 2,000 years', particularly through commercial links with Britain and the Low Countries since the 12th century, and calls its plan the success of philosophers who wanted towns to be 'melting pots of humanism, universality and culture'.

Universalis notes that in the 18th century the city's merchants, magistrates and thinkers, the last symbolized by Montesquieu, gave it its classical monuments, and that in 1914 the first industrial plants were built to offset the port's decline.