Saint-Julien Washhouse Boat

Look across the river: that unusual floating house is a washhouse boat. Laval is home to the last two authentic municipal washhouse boats in France. You can see them elsewhere, but they’re usually reconstructions or remains fixed along the quays. Here, you’re looking at a genuine witness to everyday French life right up until the 1960s. In Laval, the activity even continued until 1969, much later than anywhere else. Why? Because the fleet had been renewed around 1900, and above all because many households still didn’t have bathrooms, so these boats remained essential to daily life. So how did it work? The boats were fitted with large basins open to the river. Washerwomen came here to scrub, rinse, and hang out laundry in every season. In winter, they even broke the ice to keep working! It was hard, noisy labor, but vital to the life of the town. Residents themselves didn’t come to do their laundry here: the boats operated as collective laundries, run by professional washerwomen. It was an exclusively female trade, while men were more involved in maintenance and handling tasks around the boats. The Saint-Julien, the one you see, sank in 2009 before being restored and refloated. Since 2013, it has been back in its original place and now serves as a small floating museum, with panels, photos, and 3D reconstructions. It’s a dive into a vanished activity that kept the banks of the Mayenne alive not so long ago.