• Le Voyage à Nantes will take place for the first time in winter from November 24, 2022.

  • Objective: to animate the city and attract outside tourists for Christmas.

After eleven summer editions having had some success, Voyage à Nantes has decided to launch a “new challenge”: attract new visitors and liven up the city more in winter by creating an event for the end-of-year celebrations.

This first edition of the "Winter Journey" will take place from November 24 to January 1.

Unveiled this Thursday, the programming, less copious than in summer, will mainly revolve around three artistic interventions.

The first will be visual and luminous with the creation of moldings and sculptures, made specifically by the artist Vincent Olinet, suspended from the facades of buildings or exhibited in the street.

Their illumination of "improbable colors" every evening from 5 p.m. will invite the walker to "stroll" on a route of about 1.5 km in the city center.

A tumult of bells every evening

The second intervention will be sound with about twenty bells, real or in the form of loudspeakers, which will ring out from eleven churches, several bridges as well as some monuments.

It "will not be a melody", explains the artist Dominique Blais, rather a "wave of ringing" that will grow in the city until a "moment of tumult".

These bells will be heard every day from 5 p.m. for a total sequence of about twenty minutes.

Finally, the third intervention will be mobile since it aims to “revisit” the usual carousel of the Place du Bouffay, resembling as much a small train as a caterpillar.

The merry-go-round and its wagons will be kept but new decors and a new atmosphere evoking "the imagination of the snowman" and "the conquest of the moon" will be created by Nantes native Quentin Faucompré.

Christmas markets unchanged this year

Le Voyage en hiver will also offer a stroll by a crazy brass band or a night-time tasting at the Talensac market (December 3).

The Christmas Market in Place Royale and Place du Commerce as well as L'Autre marché in Feydeau are maintained in their usual formats, but a "reflection is open" for an intervention by Voyage à Nantes "probably next year".

Christmas events specific to shopkeepers will also be reinforced this year, while the castle of the Dukes of Brittany will organize a late-night opening on December 10 and the Machines de l'île will brighten up, as every year, with the Christmas event at naves.



The budget for this winter travel is estimated at around 800,000 euros, according to Nantes Métropole.

This amount includes an expenditure of around 600,000 euros for entertainment and illuminations, or “the equivalent” of what was spent during the previous end-of-year celebrations by the city of Nantes, assures the community.

The rest corresponds to the annual investment for the creation of works by Vincent Olinet, Dominique Blais and Quentin Faucompré.

All three are destined to return the following winters for a period of at least five years.

The program will nevertheless be enriched with “new proposals” over the years.

“There is the desire to make Nantes an end-of-year destination,” assumes Gildas Saläun, deputy mayor of Nantes.

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