Things to do
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Cathédrale Saint-Vincent
Romanesque nave, Gothic choir, and modern glass by Jean Le Moal filling windows blown out in the war, which gives the interior a colour that no medieval church has. Jacques Cartier received his blessing here before sailing for Canada in 1534, and a stone in the floor marks the spot.
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Cézembre
A garrison island held to the end in 1944 and bombed so heavily that most of it is still closed for unexploded ordnance, with one south-facing beach cleared and reachable by boat in summer. There is a single seasonal restaurant and no shade. It is the reason the mainland town had to be rebuilt.
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Château de Saint-Malo
Anne of Brittany raised the great keep in 1498 with an inscription warning the townspeople who would be master, since the town had a habit of declaring itself a republic. It now holds the town hall and a museum of the port, its corsairs and its voyages. The tower gives the harbour from above.
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Fort du Petit Bé
The smaller island beyond the first one, carrying a Vauban fort of 1693 that was privately restored and is opened by its keeper for tours. It sits further out, so the window for crossing is shorter and the return matters more. From the parapet the whole line of the ramparts is laid out.
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Fort National
Vauban put this on a rock offshore in 1689 to cover the approaches, and it is still reached only at low tide, over the sand from the Plage de l'Éventail. Guided visits run when the tide and the season allow, and the flag flying over it is the signal that it is open. Check the tide table first.
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Grand aquarium
Nine themed rooms south of the town covering the Channel, the tropics and the deep, with a ring tank walked through under the water and a submarine simulator that takes small groups down a shaft. It is the standard answer to a wet day on this coast. Reached by bus or a short drive from the walls.
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Grand Bé
A rock island off the western wall, crossed dry-shod for a few hours either side of low water, where Chateaubriand asked to be buried facing the sea under a plain slab with no name on it. The walk out takes ten minutes. Tide notices at the causeway give the hour it closes, and the sea comes in quickly.
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La Conchée
Vauban's most exposed work, built from 1693 on a reef four kilometres out with masons landing only at low water in calm weather, and repeatedly shelled by the English while it went up. It cannot be visited and stands offshore as a silhouette, best seen from the ramparts or from a boat to Cézembre.
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Pointe du Grouin
A headland of cliffs and gorse closing the bay to the east, with the bird reserve of the Île des Landes just offshore and Mont-Saint-Michel visible across the water on a clear day. The coastal path runs along the edge of it. Twenty minutes by car past Cancale, which is where the oysters come from.
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Remparts de Saint-Malo
Nearly two kilometres of granite wall enclosing the walled town, begun in the twelfth century and widened by Vauban, and among the few things that survived 1944 more or less whole. The full circuit is free, open at all hours and takes about an hour, giving the beaches, the forts and the roofs in turn.
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Tour Solidor
Three linked towers at Saint-Servan, put up in 1369 by a duke of Brittany to control traffic on the Rance and used later as a prison. Inside is a museum of the Cape Horn sailing ships and the men who worked them. It stands away from the walled town, which keeps it quiet.
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Usine marémotrice de la Rance
The first tidal power station in the world, opened in 1966 across the river mouth and still generating from a range that reaches thirteen metres. A road runs over the barrage to Dinard and a viewing point explains the turbines. It was the largest of its kind for forty-five years.