Chateaubriand Square and Saint-Vincent gate

You’re arriving now at Place Chateaubriand, lined with elegant townhouses, cafés, and restaurants. Here you’ll find Saint Vincent Gate, now the main entrance into the walled city of Saint-Malo. To really appreciate this monumental gate, you need to see it from the other side. Above the arches, you’ll notice two coats of arms. The one on the left is the city’s emblem: an ermine wearing a cape above the portcullis that once closed the entrances of fortified castles. If your eyesight is sharp enough, you may also make out Saint-Malo’s motto: Semper Fidelis—“Always faithful.” In fact, keep your eyes open—or rather, look down—as you walk through town, because you’ll find the coat of arms and motto even on the manhole covers. The shield on the right displays the arms of the Duchy of Brittany. You’ll recognize the familiar symbols still seen today on the Breton flag. What you may not know is that these shapes also represent ermines. The animal, Brittany’s mascot, appears either in a realistic form or in a stylized version that looks a bit like a flower with three points hanging downward. If that seems a rather odd way to depict an animal, there’s actually a practical reason. At the time, coats of arms were painted on shields and often lined with fur, usually squirrel or ermine. Since ermine fur turns entirely white in winter except for the tail, which stays black, the skins were sewn together and the black tails arranged in the center, attached by three little crossbars. That’s how the symbol came to be. But why is the ermine so closely tied to Brittany and its motto: “Death before dishonor”? Several legends exist, but the best known tells of a hunt organized by Anne of Brittany. An ermine was cornered by the hounds and, instead of escaping through a muddy puddle, which would have saved it, it chose to surrender rather than soil its white coat. Moved by such bravery, the duchess is said to have spared the animal and adopted it as the emblem of her duchy.