State property, listed as a historical monument on July 17, 2009, it is now rented to the Les Glénans sailing school. A tower also serves as a landmark.
Fort Cigogne was built well after the request of Marshal Montesquiou in 1717, anxious to counter the occupation of the Glénan archipelago by English and Dutch privateers. After a first project that was not followed up, the fort began to be built in 1756, on a slight natural relief covering the eastern half of the island and which constitutes the highest point of all the islands of the archipelago. The plan is a combination of two bastions, one offering a concave facade to the west and the other a convex facade to the south. The north and east fronts are formed in symmetry by non-bastioned ramparts. The south-east corner is flanked by a tower which housed the latrines. The granite ramparts have facades seven meters high from which initially nothing emerged. The western and southern bastions are made up of wide artillery boulevards with parapets and vaulted casemates, most of which are equipped with firing bays to the outside. Apart from the fighting, these casemates were used as barracks (dormitories, refectory, kitchen, bakery, cellar, chapel, powder magazine and dungeons). They are supplemented by a hospital (having probably served as accommodation for the officers).
Very quickly however, the English corsairs stopped anchoring in the "room" between the Cigogne and Saint-Nicolas islands and took shelter out of range of the guns near the island of Penfret or the Moutons islands further north.
Throughout the 19th century, various work campaigns were carried out to try to complete the construction of the fort while adapting it to the evolution of artillery, strengthening security and improving the living conditions of the garrison. . Thus the western entrance is defended by a ditch and a drawbridge surmounted by a breteche, an artillery terrace is fitted out on a natural relief to the east, paved artillery platforms are installed, a well and a vaulted underground cistern are built.
The fort was decommissioned by the French Navy in 1899. It was then assigned to the Collège de France and served as a weather station and ornithological observatory post for the marine biology laboratory at Concarneau. On this occasion, a small masonry aedicule was built on the western rampart, which today serves as a quarter.
In 1914-1918, during the First World War, the Concarnois occupied Fort Cigogne. In 1940-1945, a small German garrison occupied the fort.
Since 1911, a 20 m tower has surmounted the southern rampart. It serves as a berth for the many boaters who stop over in the archipelago, and is used by the French Navy for speed tests between Groix and the Glénan archipelago.
Between 1891 and 1930, the island also housed a weather observatory set up by the Concarneau marine biology laboratory.
Since 1967 Fort Cigogne has been used by trainees from the Les Glénans nautical center, which is a tenant, while also serving until 1974 as seasonal accommodation for fishermen. In 2013 Fort Cigogne was classified as a historical monument. In 2016, the Conservatoire du Littoral becomes the beneficiary of the island and the fort, which renews the rental lease for the sailing school.
In 2019, restoration and redevelopment work on Fort Cigogne was launched. On this occasion, the building is selected as one of the 18 emblematic projects of the 2018 edition of the heritage lottery.
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