Département: Maine-et-Loire
Angers, once capital of the county of Anjou and now chief town of the département of Maine-et-Loire, the see of a bishop and a university town, lies half way between Tours and Nantes straddling the river Maine, 8km/5mi above its junction with the Loire. Slate-quarrying is an
old-established industry in the surrounding area. Other important industries are textiles and electrical apparatus and appliances.
In Gallo-Roman times Angers was the center of a territory inhabited by the Andecavi, and after the Roman conquest a fort was built above the river at this point. In the ninth century the Normans occupied the town but were driven out by Charles the Bald. With the rise of Foulques dynasty, who were at first Viscounts and from around 950 Counts of Anjou, the town flourished, along with the rest of Anjou. In the time of Foulques Nerra (987-1030) in particular many defensive and religious buildings were erected. Geoffroy V (1129- 1151) was the first of the line to bear the name Plantagenet (after his crest, a stylized broom bush (genista), and his son was the first Plantagenet king of England as Henry II. In the 12th century, therefore, Anjou became an English possession. Charles of Anjou was given the throne of Naples and Sicily by the Pope, but his ambitious political plans were shattered by the Sicilian Vespers (1282), when 6,000 Frenchmen were killed by the Sicilians. The best known figure in the history of Angers is Duke René I, "le bon Roi René". As a ruler he was unsuccessful (losing the last remaining Italian territories held by Anjou), but as a man he was highly cultivated, a patron of the arts, and made his capital a great cultural center. After his death in 1481 Anjou passed to the French crown. In 1940 the provisional government of Poland was based in Angers.
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