Boulogne-sur-Mer (France)

Boulogne-sur-Mer (aka Boulogne) is a port city located Northern France's English Channel coast. The city covers a total area of approx 8 km2 (3 ml2) and has population around 45,000.

• Boulogne-sur-Mer is on Cote d'Opale coast of the English Channel. This is also the 2nd-largest city of its department - after Calais, as well as the country's 60th largest. Boulogne port is France's largest fishing port, specializing in herring.
• Boulogne was the most important Roman port for communication and trade with Anglia (Britain).
• The city's 12th century belfry (tower) is one of all 56 found in Belgium and northeastern France with shared World Heritage Site status. It's the city's oldest building - currently a museum of Celtic remains from Roman times.
• Around 7,000 of the city's inhabitants derive their livelihoods from herring fishing port. The French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER) and Pasteur Institute are situated in Boulogne Port.
• Chateau de Boulogne-sur-Mer (castle museum) houses the world's most important exhibition of Alaskan masks, also the France's 2nd largest collection of Greek ceramics (after the Louvre), as well as collections of Roman and medieval sculptures, Egyptian collection, paintings (15th-20th century), African Arts.
• La Casa San Martin is now a museum where Jose de San Martin (1778-1850, Argentina's leader of independence struggle) died in 1850. Between 1930-1967 the house was consulate of Argentina in France. A statue there is dedicated to Simon Bolivar (1783-1830) - another South American liberator in revolutions against Spanish colonial rule during the 1810s.

Boulogne-sur-Mer cruise terminal