The 50 Hostages Square

Place des 50 Otages, a place of memory

The Nantes audio-guided tour leads you to Place des 50 Otages, where a commemorative monument recalls a painful history. It must be told with gravity, like all these sufferings inflicted by men, in order to remember and never repeat.

October 1941, the execution of the hostages

In 1941, the German lieutenant-colonel Karl Hotz was shot in Nantes by a resistance commando. In reprisal, and with the assistance of the Vichy regime, the occupier ordered the execution of dozens of hostages. Fifty men were designated to be shot. Among the group of Nantes residents was the young Guy Môquet, whose heartbreaking letter to his parents is still studied at school. The square and its monument perpetuate the memory of these victims and their sacrifice.

What there is to see

The commemorative monument, sober and solemn, invites contemplation and reflection on this dark page of history. The square, one of the main thoroughfares of Nantes, was laid out in the twentieth century on the route of former filled-in watercourses. A place of daily passage, it is also a space of memory, where the remembrance of the executed hostages remains alive in the heart of the city.

Practical information

Place des 50 Otages is in the heart of Nantes, on the cours of the same name, one of the great thoroughfares of the city. It is a public space freely accessible at all hours and on the level. A place of memory, the monument invites a visit marked by respect.

What does Place des 50 Otages commemorate?

It commemorates the fifty hostages shot in October 1941, in reprisal for the death of a German officer, among them the young Guy Môquet.

Who was Guy Môquet?

A young man shot among the hostages in 1941, whose last letter to his parents, deeply moving, is still read in schools.