La Rochelle Self Guided Tour of Salt and Slave Ships

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.

1. 1

   Stop 1

   Pass by

   Stand at the tower that sealed the harbour shut, until the day it blew its own roof off

2. 2

   Stop 2

   12 min

   Look out over the water where a cardinal built a mile of stone to starve a city

3. 3

   Porte de la Grosse-Horloge

   8 min

   Pass beneath the grand clock tower that began life as the city's most guarded gateway

4. 4

   Stop 4

   8 min

   Step into the Templar compound whose treasure fleet slipped out one night and was never found

5. 5

   Stop 5

   10 min

   Find the single tower that survived every fire, siege, and demolition this church suffered

6. 6

   Stop 6

   10 min

   Encounter the faith this whole city was punished for, and a pulpit built to vanish

7. 7

   Stop 7

   Pass by

   Uncover the council table a starving mayor stabbed sooner than let anyone say surrender

8. 8

   Maison Henri II

   6 min

   Notice the magnificent facade hiding almost no house at all behind its carved stone

9. 9

   Le Bunker de La Rochelle

   Pass by

   Pause at an ordinary door concealing a war bunker the size of a house

10. 10

    Stop 10

    12 min

    Follow your nose into the covered market for oysters, mussels, and potatoes worth their own appellation

11. 11

    New World Museum (Musee du Nouveau-Monde)

    Pass by

    See where a slave-trade fortune now shares its courtyard with a freed slave cast in bronze

12. 12

    Stop 12

    12 min

    Decode a cathedral built as revenge, right on the ground its rival once stood

13. 13

    Place de verdun

    12 min

    Cross a plain car park sitting on the buried foundations of a vanished royal castle

14. 14

    Stop 14

    10 min

    Trace the street named for a merchant who begged in the gutter before his ships came home

15. 15

    Stop 15

    8 min

    Count the carved heads of great physicians studding a house named for the wrong doctor

16. 16

    Hotel de la Bourse

    8 min

    Search the courtyard of the old merchants' exchange for the compass rose underfoot

17. 17

    La Rue De L'escale

    12 min

    Walk the last cobbled street, paved with ballast stones ships hauled across the ocean

18. 18

    Stop 18

    Pass by

    Read the six hundred carvings prisoners scratched into a lighthouse turned three-century jail

19. 19

    Porte des Deux Moulins

    10 min

    Finish at the gate in the walls a king built so this city could never rebel again

• Service animals allowed
• Public transportation options are available nearby
• Suitable for all physical fitness levels

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.