Nantes | |
---|---|
State | |
Country | |
Capital | |
Population | 309346 |
Nantes (, also US: , French: [nɑ̃t] (listen); Gallo: Naunnt or Nantt [nɑ̃(ː)t]; Breton: Naoned [ˈnãunət]) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, 50 km (31 mi) from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth-largest in France, with a population of 309,346 in Nantes and a metropolitan area of nearly 973,000 inhabitants (2017). With Saint-Nazaire, a seaport on the Loire estuary, Nantes forms one of the main north-western French metropolitan agglomerations.
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 conquered by the Bretons in 851. Although Nantes was the primary residence of the 15th-century dukes of Brittany, Rennes became the provincial capital after the 1532 union of Brittany and France.
Ulyanovsk | |
---|---|
State | |
Country | |
Capital | |
Population | 619492 |
Ulyanovsk is a city and the administrative center of Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia, located on the Volga River 705 kilometers (438 mi) east of Moscow. 613,786 (2010 Census); 635,947 (2002 Census); 625,155 (1989 Census).The city, founded as Simbirsk (Симбирск), is the birthplace of Vladimir Lenin (born Ulyanov), for whom it was renamed after his death in 1924, and Alexander Kerensky, the leader of the Russian Provisional Government that was overthrown by Lenin during the October Revolution of 1917.