This street, which is located in-between the Place de la Croix du Fief and the Place du Pilori, bears the family name of a captain from Saint-Malo who was taken prisoner by the King of Morocco. Subsequently, he was sent as an envoy to Louis XIV in order to negotiate buying back the French King’s Moroccan slaves.
Along one side of this street is the apse of Saint-Vincent Cathedral, and it connects directly with the port via the Grand’Rue.
It was in the Grand’Rue that, on 27 October 1661, the town’s first great fire was declared, which destroyed 287 houses in a single night.
Nearly all of this neighbourhood was once again destroyed during the fighting for the liberation of the town in August 1944. The cathedral was also heavily damaged. Its Neo-Gothic spire, built thanks to a major donation from Emperor Napoleon III around 1859-60, was knocked over and collapsed onto the roofs and arches of the church.
After 1944, the Historic Monuments Commission cleared the area around the structure, rebuilt the buttresses and the pointed arch openings in the apse, and set up small workshops along the street so that they could be restored.
A large rose-window replacing the one that had been destroyed during the first Anglo-Dutch bombardment in 1693 was restored, and a new spire was built in 1971.
