Cities & architecture · Parc des Chantiers — Galerie des Machines — workshop terraces — Grand Éléphant route — Marine Worlds Carrousel
Enter the mechanical imagination of Nantes
Explore animated creatures inside the former Nantes shipyards, watch the Grand Éléphant move through public space and descend into the Marine Worlds Carrousel.
The old industrial sheds first appear large enough for ships; then a mechanical heron spreads its wings and the scale changes again. Machinists expose gears, wood, steel and performance inside the gallery before the elephant carries the workshop's logic outside. Beside the Loire, the three-level carrousel extends the same experiment underwater through moving rays, crabs and imagined deep-sea forms.
Check the live calendar and reserve separate timed activities when offered, especially during holidays. Gallery visits take about one hour, the carrousel about fifty minutes and elephant rides about thirty minutes. The elephant can be watched from the public park for free and is weather-dependent; no rides operate during scheduled maintenance from 2 November 2026 through 28 February 2027.