Loire-Atlantique
French department
Loire-Atlantique (French pronunciation: [lwaʁ atlɑ̃tik] ; Gallo: Leire-de-Bertègn; Breton: Liger-Atlantel; before 1957: Loire-Inférieure, Breton: Liger-Izelañ) is a department in the economical administrative region of Pays de la Loire and the historical and cultural region of Brittany on the west coast of France, named after the river Loire and the Atlantic Ocean. It had a population of 1,487,570 in 2023.
History
Loire-Atlantique is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. Originally, it was named Loire-Inférieure, but its name was changed in March 9, 1957 to Loire-Atlantique.
The area was formed from the Province of Brittany, and contains what many people still consider to be Brittany's capital, Nantes. However, during World War II, the Vichy Government set up a system of regional prefectures whereby on 19 April 1941 Loire-Atlantique was excluded from the Region of Brittany and united with neighbouring French departments, under the lead of Angers.
After the war these administrative changes were reimplemented in the 1955 boundary changes intended to optimise the management of the regions. There has since been a series of campaigns reflecting a strong local mood to have the department reintegrated with Brittany.
Geography
Loire-Atlantique is part of the current region of Pays de la Loire and is surrounded by the departments of Morbihan, Ille-et-Vilaine, Maine-et-Loire, and Vendée, with the Atlantic on the west.
Principal towns
The most populous commune is Nantes, the prefecture.
“Loire-Atlantique” enters the record as french department. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Loire-Atlantique, French and department can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3068. VIAF identifies the subject as 116144648670720957593. The Library of Congress control number is n81042223. Authority coordinates are 47.333, -1.667. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1957, 2023, 1790 and 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “Loire-Atlantique” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.