Pays de Pontivy
A town of contrasts
Beside Pontivy’s waterfront, a section of the vast Nantes-Brest canal, great squares stand in Napoleonic magnificence with their pollarded chestnuts and their grand civic buildings.
Walk away from the canal, and in a moment you’re in the main shopping street, running roughly north-south and extending, seemingly, for miles, crowded with businesses and parked cars.
Turn north along the narrow, shadowy pavements, and in momentsquares with their half-timbered buildings are seemingly plonked down wherever their original builders felt like putting them, with none of the severely ordered planning of the waterfront area.
Here, too, is Pontivy’s little pedestrian zone, where you can shop for toys or computer games, sit over a pizza or a crêpe, or simply follow your nose around winding lanes
Pontivy’s castle stands atop a green mound like an afterthought just
outside the main town. It still belongs to the Rohan family, whose
name lives on in the much smaller town of Rohan, down the road
in the gentle hillsides of inner Morbihan with their pastures, quiet
forests and scattering of ancient farms.