Fougères (fuʒɛʁ; Felger; Gallo: Foujerr) is a commune and a sub-prefecture of the Ille-et-Vilaine department, located in Brittany, northwestern France. As of 2017, Fougères had 20,418 inhabitants. The Fougères area comprises approximately 88,000 inhabitants and is currently growing, unlike the town centre.
Fougères is a town on the edge of Brittany, Maine and Normandy and is named after a fern (see also fougère), or from fous which means fossé ("gap").
The town of Fougères is mentioned in the chorus of the song La Blanche Hermine by Gilles Servat. The author uses it as a symbol of the Breton resistance where it is adjacent to the town of Clisson in the Loire-Atlantique.
Fougères is historically, since the arrival of Latin in Armorica, a region where Gallo is spoken. In Gallo, Fougères translates to Foujerr while its Breton name is Felger. Entry signs to the agglomeration have carried the Breton name for several years. One of the two bagad of the city takes this name: fr and the Diwan school, opened in 2013, is also called Skol Diwan bro Felger.
The presence of many megalithic monuments, particularly in the fr, suggests that the area was already inhabited in the Neolithic era (5000 to 2000 years BC).
fr:Siège de Fougères (1449) and fr:Siège de Fougères (1488)
The creation of Fougères dates back to the Middle Ages. The Château de Fougères was first mentioned around the end of the 10th century. At the time, it was a simple wooden fortification located on a rocky ridge, whose position favourably dominated the fr Valley and the surrounding marshes. Fougères was at the crossing of two Roman roads, one from Chartres to Carhaix and the other from Avranches to Nantes. From the 12th century, the population moved away from the shore of the Nançon and the city grew in size, divided into two parishes: Saint-Sulpice for the lower town and Saint-Léonard for the upper town. Since the Middle Ages, crafts developed around tannery, weavers and drapers in the lower town.