The city is the sixth largest in France , with a population of , in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabitants It is the administrative seat of the Loire-Atlantique department and the Pays de la Loire region , one of 18 regions of France. Nantes belongs historically and culturally to Brittany , a former duchy and province , and its omission from the modern administrative region of Brittany is controversial.
Nantes was identified during classical antiquity as a port on the Loire. It was the seat of a bishopric at the end of the Roman era before it was captured by the Bretons in with the help of Lambert II of Nantes. Although Nantes was the primary residence of the 15th-century dukes of Brittany , Rennes became the provincial capital after the union of Brittany and France. During the 17th century, after the establishment of the French colonial empire , Nantes gradually became the largest port in France and was responsible for nearly half of the 18th-century French Atlantic slave trade.
The French Revolution resulted in an economic decline, but Nantes developed robust industries after chiefly in shipbuilding and food processing. Deindustrialization in the second half of the 20th century spurred the city to adopt a service economy.
It is the third-highest-ranking city in France, after Paris and Lyon. Nantes is named after a tribe of Gaul , the Namnetes , who established a settlement between the end of the second century and the beginning of the first century BC on the north bank of the Loire near its confluence with the Erdre. The Namnete root of the city's name was introduced at the end of the Roman period, when it became known as Portus Namnetum "port of the Namnetes" [ 19 ] and civitas Namnetum 'city of the Namnetes'.
Nantes's historical nickname was "Venice of the West" French: la Venise de l'Ouest , a reference to the many quays and river channels in the old town before they were filled in during the s and s. The first inhabitants of what is now Nantes settled during the Bronze Age , later than in the surrounding regions which have Neolithic monuments absent from Nantes.
