Saint-Georges swimming pool, Art Deco swimming pool in Rennes, France.
Saint-Georges swimming pool is an Art Deco facility in Rennes featuring a 33-meter basin covered by a concrete vault and decorated with blue ceramic tiles. The exterior combines Dutch yellow bricks, granite, and limestone into a unified facade.
Emmanuel Le Ray, the city architect, drew up the project in 1911, but construction ran from 1923 to 1926 under mayor Carle Bahon, after the municipal council approved the principle on 5 April 1921. The pool opened on 4 July 1926, partly funded by a state subsidy. It was classified a monument historique on 26 October 2016.
The pool's name comes from the neighbouring Palais Saint-Georges, and the municipal complex also housed public baths. Its ceramic decoration by Isidore Odorico, in Briare enamels, covers the basin, the walkways, the footbaths and the bottoms of the tanks, and is counted among the major Art Deco works in France. In 1999 the 96-metre basin frieze, its yellow-green and brown enamels forming interlacing wavelets, was replaced by an Italian-made copy laid by a tiler from Saint-Malo.
The facility operates under different schedules depending on the type of use, such as public swimming, school groups, or sports associations. Visitors should check ahead to see when the venue is available for their intended activity.
The 96-metre frieze along the basin, in yellow-green and brown enamels forming interlacing wavelets, was replaced in 1999 by a copy made in an Italian workshop and laid by a tiler from Saint-Malo, after chlorine had degraded the original. The pool was ranked eighth most beautiful in the world by the Californian magazine Architectural Digest.
The community of curious travelers
AroundUs brings together thousands of curated places, local tips, and hidden gems, enriched daily by 93,562 contributors worldwide.
