Welcome to
La Rochelle
La Rochelle Self Guided Tour of Salt and Slave Ships
- Duration2 hours
- Max Travelers15 people
- Free CancellationUp to 24 hrs
- CategoryAudio Guides, Cultural Tours
Overview
Inside a grand merchant mansion sits a bronze tribute to an enslaved man born on the island that enriched this city. The mayor framed it as La Rochelle making peace with its past. Beyond the postcard-perfect harbour and its iconic twin towers lies a deeper story: as one of France’s major slave-trading ports, this audio tour invites you to explore both sides of its history.
This self-guided audio walking tour of La Rochelle follows a harbour that shipped salt and wine out as white gold, then grew fat on the triangular slave trade. You’ll stand where a mayor drove his dagger into the council table rather than surrender, trace a Templar fleet that vanished one night with its treasure, and meet a ruined merchant whose lost ships came home laden with gold.
Press play at 19 stops. Walk at your own pace, no fixed start time, no group to follow, with offline audio in your choice of language.
Over 25,000 travelers have used our self-guided tours, and every tour comes with a refund guarantee.
Gallery
What's included
1-year access to audio on iOS & Android. Listen to the tour anytime, as many times as you like
Audio and written guide included
100% Satisfaction Guarantee: If you donu2019t love the tour, write to us for a full refund
Offline access to the tour (no internet connection needed) once tour is downloaded
Images to identify stops and in app interactive map for navigation
What's Not included
Any physical devices or headphones
Human tour guide at location
Itinerary
Stand at the tower that sealed the harbour shut, until the day it blew its own roof off
Look out over the water where a cardinal built a mile of stone to starve a city
Pass beneath the grand clock tower that began life as the city's most guarded gateway
Step into the Templar compound whose treasure fleet slipped out one night and was never found
Find the single tower that survived every fire, siege, and demolition this church suffered
Encounter the faith this whole city was punished for, and a pulpit built to vanish
Uncover the council table a starving mayor stabbed sooner than let anyone say surrender
Notice the magnificent facade hiding almost no house at all behind its carved stone
Pause at an ordinary door concealing a war bunker the size of a house
Follow your nose into the covered market for oysters, mussels, and potatoes worth their own appellation
See where a slave-trade fortune now shares its courtyard with a freed slave cast in bronze
Decode a cathedral built as revenge, right on the ground its rival once stood
Cross a plain car park sitting on the buried foundations of a vanished royal castle
Trace the street named for a merchant who begged in the gutter before his ships came home
Count the carved heads of great physicians studding a house named for the wrong doctor
Search the courtyard of the old merchants' exchange for the compass rose underfoot
Walk the last cobbled street, paved with ballast stones ships hauled across the ocean
Read the six hundred carvings prisoners scratched into a lighthouse turned three-century jail
Finish at the gate in the walls a king built so this city could never rebel again
Good to know
Service animals allowed
Public transportation options are available nearby
Suitable for all physical fitness levels
Cancellation Policy
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.