How an ice house restoration is bringing life back to a French seaport

Étel, a town in Brittany in France, is seeing its past being brought back to life.

It was once a big fishing port here and La Glacière - or the ice house - is a remnant of that heritage. Now it's being restored in a project that blends the town's history with the future of green Energy.

The deputy mayor of Étel Étienne Pigeon displays a black and white photograph: "Here's what it looked like in 1960. After the restoration of the building, we really wanted to keep all of this, the double vaults, the balcony which was also important and which allowed the ice to be loaded. All the entrances and the doors have been kept."

Constructed in 1946, la Glacière d’Étel produced ice for the local port. Later the building was abandoned and fell into disrepair. Now the local authorities have bought it out to be restored.

"It's the last ice house in Morbihan, in Brittany," explains Étienne. "Until the 1950s there were 250 sailing boats that were used for fishing, mainly for tuna, and the tuna had to be preserved obviously, it needed ice, so without this building, there was no fishing. The main objective of our project is to welcome the public. People are attached to the building, they know it, they come from all over the department to see it."

La Glacière already hosts exhibitions, this one's dedicated to maritime energy in Brittany. The use of green energy is a key part of the renovation project with a tidal turbine and a heat pump among the technologies used to bring the sea's energy to the building.

"We are going to use as a priority here at La Glacière all the sources of energy that we can find here nearby," explains Aurélien Bertin, advisor to La Glacière d’Étel Energy Project at VALOEN. "From the sea to begin with, we are going to use