Brest

Brest, port city, Finistère département, Bretagne région, western France, on two hills divided by the Penfeld River. Its magnificent roadstead, the Rade de Brest, is 14 miles (23 km) long; it is protected from the sea by the Quélern Peninsula, and the Goulet Passage (about 1–2 miles wide [1.5–3 km]) leads to open water.

Brest was ceded about 1240 by Count Hervé V of Léon to John I, duke of Brittany. The English occupied it from 1342 until 1397. By marriage it passed (1491) from Brittany to the French crown. Cardinal de Richelieu decided in 1631 to make it a major naval base. It was improved by Jean-Baptiste Colbert and fortified by Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban. The former instituted the Inscription Maritime, still functioning, which inducted Breton fishermen (18–48 years old) into the Naval Reserve. In exchange for this obligation, the Inscription offers them family security for life. Brest has been the seat of the French Naval Academy since 1830.

Brest was the debarkation point for U.S. troops during World War I. Afterward its importance as a naval and transatlantic passenger port increased. The Germans, who occupied it in June 1940, built concrete submarine pens and used the port as a base against Allied shipping. The city, almost completely destroyed during World War II, has been rebuilt, its port restored and re-equipped. The naval port, behind the Lanion breakwater, is in part excavated from the rock, and some of the installations are in deep caves in the cliffs. The commercial port, which has large shipfitting installations, is separated from the city by the Cours Dajot, an excellent promenade constructed on the old ramparts in 1769 by convicts from the notorious prison hulks of Brest (closed in the 19th century when Devil’s Island and the penal colony of French Guiana were established). It is, with Toulon, one of the two major bases of the French navy.

In the 1960s three industrial zones were created to offset a decline in naval construction. Metallurgy, associated with shipbuilding and repair, is important; planned diversified industries include precision mechanics, gas bottling, and the manufacture of electronic equipment, fertilizers, chemicals, and paper. Pop. (1999) 149,634; (2005 est.) 145,200.