Belle Île

Belle-Île or Belle-Île-en-Mer (ar Gerveur in Modern Breton)—Guedel in Old Breton—is a French island off the coast of Brittany in the département of Morbihan, and the largest of Brittany's islands. It is 14km from the Quiberon peninsula.

Administratively, the island forms a canton: the canton of Belle-Île. It is divided into four communes:

• Bangor
• Le Palais
• Locmaria
• Sauzon

Geography

The island measures 17km by 9 km and has an average altitude of 40m. The coasts are a mixture between dangerously sharp cliff edges on the southwest side, the Côte Sauvage (Wild coast), and calm placid beaches (the largest being les Grands Sables (The great sands)) and navigable harbours on the northeast side. The island's climate is oceanic, having less rain and milder winters than on the mainland.

The two main ports are Le Palais (accessible by ferry from Quiberon) and Sauzon (accessible by ferry from Quiberon and Lorient).

There used to be forests on the island, but these have long disappeared due to increasing agricultural use of the land.

History

Belle Île was separated from the mainland about 6000 B.C., earlier than its neighbouring islands Houat and Hœdic. Archaelogical finds from the Bronze Age suggest that the island enjoyed a large increase in population in this time, probably due to improvements in seafaring.

In the 9th century Belle-Île belonged to county of Cornouaille.

Miscellaneous

During the summer the island's population increases dramatically, with many people owning a second home on the island, because of its secluded location and beaches.

It is the setting for a portion of The Man in the Iron Mask, an adventure novel by 19th century French writer Alexandre Dumas.

This article is licenced under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Belle Île".