Saint-Malo
commune in Ille-et-Vilaine, France
Saint-Malo (UK: , US: , French: [sɛ̃ malo] ; Gallo: Saent-Malô; Breton: Sant-Maloù) is a historic French port commune in Ille-et-Vilaine, Brittany.
Originally, the walled city sat on a rocky granite island connected to the mainland only by a natural, narrow sand spit and tidal mudflats called le Sillon. Stonework and a basic road were first established along this sandbar in 1509 to protect the area and create dry access. The original structure was widened, raised, and rebuilt over the centuries — particularly in the 19th century — to form the modern dyke and thoroughfare (La Digue du Sillon) that permanently connects the old town to the rest of the coast.
The walled city on the English Channel coast has a long history of piracy, earning much wealth from local extortion and overseas adventures. In 1944, during World War II, the Allies heavily bombed Saint-Malo. The city became a popular tourist centre, with a ferry terminal serving the Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey, as well as the Southern English settlements of Portsmouth, Hampshire and Poole, Dorset.
The transatlantic single-handed yacht race Route du Rhum, which takes place every four years in November, is between Saint Malo and Pointe-à-Pitre in Guadeloupe.
Population
The population in 2023 was 47,439 – though this can increase to up to 300,000 in the summer tourist season. With the suburbs included, the metropolitan area's population is approximately 138,000 (2022).
“Saint-Malo” enters the record as commune in Ille-et-Vilaine, France. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Saint-Malo, commune and Ille-et-Vilaine can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q163108. VIAF identifies the subject as 141853833. The Library of Congress control number is n81053400. Authority coordinates are 48.649, -2.026. 2 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1509, 1944, 2023 and 2022.
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This entry incorporates text from “Saint-Malo” 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.