Le Mans aquatique: a city stroll with marine reminiscences

By Aina Trias Verbeeck, Institució Milà i Fontanals – CSIC, Barcelona

My work plan for the SciCoMove stay in Le Mans reflected the intention to track down specimens of marine origin in the collection of the city’s natural history museum, the Musée Vert.

After a few days of wandering around, seeing the museum, talking to several people, I realised that Le Mans, 150 kilometres from the sea but crossed by two rivers – the Sarthe and L’Huisne come together in the southwest of the city – contained many aquatic stories.

Approaching these stories before immersing in the museum’s collections was a small journey that allowed me to understand the sea and its sway from other perspectives, times and spaces in the city and its surroundings.

The giants of the sea

During the Mesozoic, 165 million years ago, the territory of the Sarthe, the department whose capital is Le Mans, was covered by the sea, populated by large reptiles.

A few days after our arrival, the Musée Vert inaugurated an exhibition dedicated to these giants, which will remain open until the summer of 2024.

Figure 1. Poster of the exhibition at the Musée Vert in Le Mans

Along the parcours, we can see more than a hundred fossils and replicas of these creatures that inhabited the site during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. The Cenomanian geological age, -100 to -93 million years ago, is located in the late Cretaceous. Its name comes from the Latin name of Le Mans, Cenomanum. It was introduced by the French palaeontologist Alcide d’Orbigny in the 19th century, as the outcrops in the area are significant for this geological period when the highest average sea level of the last 600 million years (Phanerozoic eon) was observed: about 150m above present levels.

In the exhibition, as in the waters of the time, the Jurassic plesiosaur, discovered in 1864 in Saint-Rémy-du-Val and restored and reconstructed for the occasion, stands out. The fossils from local sites are accompanied by ichthyosaur and dinosaur remains from the National Museum of Natural History and private collections. Some are presented in comparison to other contemporary organisms. We find a complete dinosaur nest with eggs found in Aix-en-Provence; facsimile skulls of Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus competing for prominence with the French Elasmosaurus and a collection of first bird-like creature fossils. An interesting set to get to know those who shared the predominantly marine landscape of the Mesozoic.

Figure 2. Juvenile sea turtle fossil from Lebanon, photo by the author

The sea in books: Pierre Belon 1517-1564

Nicolas Morel, in charge of the museum, told us that Pierre Belon may be quite known to those who are familiar with the history of science, the renaissance and/or zoology, but in Le Mans he does not seem to have great prominence.

A street in the city and a room in the museum are named after him. Few remember that this land on the banks of the Sarthe, namely the commune of Cérans-Foulletourte some 20 km south of the centre of Mans, was the birthplace of one of the acclaimed pioneers of ichthyology, although his interests ranged from comparative anatomy to Egyptology.

Figure 3. Rue Belon in Le Mans, photo by the author

We may shy away from the designation of pioneers, fathers (notoriously it is hardly spoken of mothers) or founders of disciplines, but we cannot deny that Belon’s legacy is an important element, a hinge between the bestiaries and medical books, the rather artistic albums of fish and the beginnings of treatises on zoology. The 16th century was a key period for natural history, and the 1550s were particularly important because of the appearance of new publications that responded to new needs and new ways of observing, understanding and appropriating nature. In this context, Pierre Belon du Mans is known for being the author of some of the most widely disseminated so-called monographic works. He published in Paris in 1551 L’histoire naturelle des estranges poissons marins and in 1553 De aquatilibus. Libri duo Cum eiconibus ad vivam ipsorum effigiem, Quoad eius fieri potuit, expressis, pursuing the aim of collecting and showing the aquatic fauna, the big unknown back then.

The imaginary, trade and fishing: La Sirène

Leaving Rue Pierre Belon behind, we arrive at the esplanade and square des Jacobins. Crossing the Paderborne avenue, at the foot of the imposing cathedral, we find a fountain, the Jet d’Eau, inhabited by a little mermaid.

Figure 4. Petite Sirène by Suzanne Jean, photo by the author

The Petite Sirène is a plaster sculpture by local artist Suzanne Jean, unveiled on 15 April 2013. As a recent piece, it may be thought to be an echo of the other mermaid of Le Mans:

The epicentre of this anthropomorphic being can be found about three hundred metres down the street. On the corner of rue de la Barillerie and rue Marchande there is an hôtel particulier from 1726, one of the first buildings of this type to be built in the city outside the walls. On its side façade we find a bas-relief depicting a mermaid in the waves in front of a boat. It has been listed as a historical monument since 1931.

The mansion belonged to the Véron du Verger family. François Véron Duverger de Forbonnais (1722-1800) is the best-known member of the lineage, inspirer of physiocracy and author of several treatises on economics and commerce: essays on Spanish finances, theory and practice of commerce and the navy, even writing up to fourteen articles for Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie. But we must look further back to find the origins of the Le Mans mermaid related to François Véron’s ancestors. According to the dates, the founder of the property would have been his father, François-Louis Véron du Verger (1695-1780), who was the permanent secretary of the Royal Agricultural Society of Le Mans. He was also a third-generation manufacturer and merchant of a woollen filter fabric, the stamen, invented by his grandfather Jean Véron (1615-1689), the great-great-grandfather of François, the economist, who may have transferred the family knowledge and practices to his writing work.

Certainly, the cloth became famous and very valuable at the beginning of the 17th century, which allowed the family the expansion of trade across the Atlantic. It seems plausible that this brought them great fortune and that the transoceanic prosperity was reflected in the relief of the mermaid with the ships on the new house’s wall.

Another relief with a mermaid stands on top of the opposite corner, where Rue Jankowski begins, accompanied by ornamental motifs resembling scales along the façade. We will have to wait for another visit to Le Mans to find out more about their history, whether they are related or a late emulation of its neighbour.

Figure 5. Bas-relief of a mermaid in the Ancien Hôtel du Verger, photo by the author

The square between these three streets is known as Place de la Sirène. The sculpture ‘Sirènes‘ by Claude Ribot was installed there in 1991, and there are several businesses that bear this name: a bar, a bookshop…

In short, the mermaid of Le Mans reminds us that it was through the sea that the expansion and fortune of many, such as the Véron du Verger family, was forged. Maritime transport became the main means of trade in goods and new luxuries from both Indies, and thus also the means by which objects, specimens, books and ideas could circulate from coast to coast.

To end with another final aquatic note, we noticed that the coat of arms of the Véron lineage is composed of three fishes. Probably by phonetic mimicry with vairon (Phoxinus phoxinus, common minnow in English), a freshwater fish common in the streams and rivers of the area. Although this species in particular is not highly prized for human consumption, if we take a walk along the riverside of L’Huisne, far from finding freshwater mermaids, we see that these are still waters where fishing is practised, a commercial activity that reminds us its notorious role – together with trade, collecting practises and many others– in the construction of knowledge of the aquatic and the configuration of natural history collections, especially marine specimens.

Figure 6. Coat of arms of the Véron lineage, Creative Commons
Figure 7. Sculpture Homme et poisson by Roland Devolder, photo by the author

Related (re)sources:

Egmond Florike. 2022. Visual immersion: Daniele Barbaro’s fish album and the wave of interest in aquatic creatures in mid sixteenth-century Europe. Notes Rec. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsnr.2021.0084.

Goethal, A. 2018. La figure de l’entrepreneur textile dans le Maine: l’exemple de la famille Véron (1684-v.1750), Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, 125-2 https://journals.openedition.org/abpo/3849.

Géants, au temps des dinosaures, Musée Vert, Museés du Mans, 2022.

Kafker, F. A. 1989. Notices sur les auteurs des dix-sept volumes de «discours» de l’Encyclopédie. Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie. Numéro 7, p. 141.

Perfetti, S. 2007. Philosophers and Animals in the Renaissance. In: Volume 3: The Renaissance (1400-1600). Kalof L., Pohl-Resl B. (Eds). A cultural history of animals. Oxford, New York: Berg. p. 155.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Nathalie Richard (January 10, 2023). Le Mans aquatique: a city stroll with marine reminiscences. SciCoMove — Scientific Collections on the Move. Retrieved April 28, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/twtr


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