Piscine Saint-Georges
MonumentHidden Treasure
Piscine Saint-Georges, located in Rennes (Département 35), is a modern edifice built in the 19th-20th centuries. The monument is currently closed to visitors.
Key facts
- Type
- autre
- Period
- Modern (19th-20th century)
- Location
- Rennes, Département 35, Bretagne
- Visit
- Closed to visitors
- GPS
- 48.1122, -1.6745
- Mérimée Reference
- PA35000077
An Art Deco gem in Rennes, the Saint-Georges swimming pool combines tuffeau, polychrome brick and flamed sandstone in a temple to municipal hygiene that has been listed as a Historic Monument since 2016.
History
In the heart of Rennes, the Saint-Georges swimming pool is one of Brittany's most distinctive and elegant public facilities. Far from the functional swimming pools of the twentieth century, this building embodies an ambitious vision of municipal architecture, in which social utility is adorned with the trappings of a veritable aesthetic manifesto. Its façades, with their skilfully blended materials - light-coloured tufa, red and yellow bricks, flamed sandstone friezes and cement frames - create a rare chromatic palette that is instantly recognisable in the urban landscape of Rennes. What makes the Saint-Georges swimming pool truly unique is the coherence of its architectural programme: at once a swimming venue, a hygienic bathhouse and a representative building, it reflects the republican ideals of the first half of the 20th century. Architect Emmanuel Le Ray designed a tripartite building, with an imposing central body flanked by two symmetrical pavilions that organise user traffic with remarkable fluidity. The interior passageway overlooking the large pool offers a theatrical view of the water, worthy of a monument in its own right. The experience is doubly rewarding: swimming in this pool lined with period cabins, under a concrete vault hidden behind a false ceiling, is like plunging into a suspended time. Lovers of Art Deco architecture will find here an authentic piece of provincial architecture, preserved in its broad outlines despite a few twentieth-century alterations. Photographers and enthusiasts of industrial and social heritage will discover an inexhaustible source of ornamental details. Located on the site of the former church of the Saint-Georges convent, to the north of the eponymous barracks, the building is part of a densely-populated historic district just a stone's throw from Rennes city centre. This geographical context, steeped in history, reinforces the exceptional character of the site, an urban palimpsest where centuries of Rennes life are superimposed, from the medieval convent to the hygienic modernity of the 20th century.
Architecture
The Saint-Georges swimming pool is a striking example of what historians call provincial Art Deco, a regional variation on the great aesthetic movement of the 1920s and 1930s that adapted modern forms to local materials and know-how. The composition of the main façade is based on a skilful interplay of volumes: a dominant central body, flanked by two symmetrical side pavilions with distinct roofs, creates a classical tripartite rhythm dressed up with a resolutely modern ornamental vocabulary. The combined use of tufa stone - the soft, luminous limestone so dear to the architecture of the Loire and Brittany - red and yellow bricks, flamed sandstone friezes and moulded cement surrounds produces a rare richness of polychromy that immediately places the building in a dual relationship: regional building tradition and national decorative modernity. Inside, the layout of the spaces reveals Emmanuel Le Ray's functional rigour. The main pool occupies the heart of the building, accessible from the two levels of cabins on either side. A passageway running above the cabins gives bathers and lifeguards a view of the entire pool, creating a vertical and almost spectacular space. The concrete vault over penetration that originally covered this space, now masked by a false ceiling dating from the 1970s, testifies to the architect's technical mastery and taste for expressive structures. The east wing, dedicated to the shower baths, completes the programme with its rows of individual cubicles, some of which were transformed into saunas during the same decade, material evidence of the changes in hygiene practices over the course of the century.
Related Figures
Emmanuel Le Ray — architecte municipal de Rennes, concepteur de la piscine Saint-GeorgesLes édiles municipaux rennais du début du XXe siècle — commanditaires de l'équipement hygiénisteLes religieuses du couvent Saint-Georges — dont l'église occupait le site avant la construction
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Frequently Asked Questions
Where is Piscine Saint-Georges located?
Piscine Saint-Georges is located in Rennes, Département 35 department, Bretagne region, France.
When was Piscine Saint-Georges built?
Piscine Saint-Georges dates back to a period built in the modern era (19th-20th century).
Is Piscine Saint-Georges open to visitors?
Piscine Saint-Georges is currently closed to visitors.