Les Machines de l'île Nantes: €12 to Ride a 48-Tonne Elephant, With Rides Paused From November

Nantes is the city where you can ride a mechanical elephant. The Grand Éléphant is about 12 metres tall, 21 metres long and weighs 48.4 tonnes. It walks out of its hangar on the Île de Nantes with up to 50 passengers on its back, sprays the crowd with water from its trunk, and takes about 30 minutes to make its round. Since 2018 it has run on a hybrid engine.

It's the headline act at Les Machines de l'île, a workshop and gallery set up in the old shipyards by the artists François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice. The machines they build there mix Jules Verne, who was born in Nantes, with Leonardo da Vinci's sketchbooks.

A giant mechanical spider suspended under the glass roof of the Galerie des Machines in Nantes, watched by a crowd with phones raised

Inside the Galerie des Machines, under the glass roof. A huge mechanical spider hangs in its frame with passengers on board, and the crowd below has its phones up. The gallery also holds a giant ant, a chameleon, a sloth, hummingbirds and the Grand Héron, whose wingspan is about 8 metres.

What it costs

The ticketing is simple. One activity, whether the elephant, the gallery or the Carrousel des Mondes Marins, costs €12 for adults, €10 reduced and €8 for children aged 4 to 12. Two activities cost €20, and all three cost €29 for an adult. Under-4s go free. The carousel is a 25-metre-tall, three-level merry-go-round of sea creatures by the river, and on a rainy day it's the best of the three.

Plan around the calendar. The elephant stops walking from November 2 2026 to March 1 2027 for its winter overhaul, so if the ride is the point, you have three weeks left this year.

The tree that wasn't

For a decade the big plan was L'Arbre aux Hérons, a giant steel tree with herons flying from its branches, planned for a disused quarry. Nantes Métropole stopped it in September 2022 and confirmed the end a year later, citing legal risks. Money already raised went to the Grand Héron, now flying from the gallery's esplanade.

The machines site still says the local chamber of commerce wants to carry the tree forward privately. Don't hold your breath. Ride the elephant instead.