[7] Although Brest is by far the largest city in Finistère, the préfecture (administrative seat) of the department is in the much smaller town of Quimper.

[10] Besides a multidisciplinary university, the University of Western Brittany, Brest and its surrounding area possess several prestigious French elite schools such as École Navale (the French Naval Academy), Télécom Bretagne and the Superior National School of Advanced Techniques of Brittany (ENSTA Bretagne, formerly ENSIETA).

Brest's history has since the 17th century been linked to the sea: the Académie de Marine (Naval Academy) was founded in 1752 in this city.

[9][11] Nothing definite is known of Brest before about 1240,[dubious – discuss] when Harvey V, Lord of Léon ceded it to John I, Duke of Brittany.

With the marriage of Francis I of France to Claude, the daughter of Anne of Brittany, the definitive overlordship of Brest – together with the rest of the duchy – passed to the French crown in 1491.

[8] The advantages of Brest's situation as a seaport town were first recognized by Cardinal Richelieu, who in 1631 constructed a harbour with wooden wharves.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, finance minister under Louis XIV, rebuilt the wharves in masonry and otherwise improved the harbour.

Despite being within range of RAF bombers, it was also a base for some of the German surface fleet, giving repair facilities and direct access to the Atlantic Ocean.

[a][14] In 1944, after the Allied invasion of Normandy, the city was almost totally destroyed during the Battle for Brest, with only a tiny number of buildings left standing.

After the war, the West German government paid several billion Deutschmarks in reparations to the homeless and destitute civilians of Brest in compensation for the destruction of their city.

Large parts of today's rebuilt city consist of utilitarian granite and concrete buildings.

The coat of arms of Brest is divided in two: to the left, there's the three fleurs-de-lis of the former kingdom of France, and to the right it has the ermines of the Duchy of Brittany.

These arms were used for the first time in a register of deliberations of the city council dated the 15 July 1683[citation needed].

The city of Brest does not have much remaining historical architecture, apart from a few select monuments such as the castle and the Tanguy tower.

This is due to heavy bombing by the Allies during World War II, in an attempt to destroy the submarine base the Germans had built in the harbour.

The naval port, which is in great part excavated in the rock, extends along both banks of the Penfeld river.

It is situated to the north of a magnificent landlocked bay, and occupies the slopes of two hills divided by the river Penfeld.

As a result of maritime moderation, Brest has cool summers by French standards, July afternoons are cooler than the norm in Western Europe.

Rainfall is common year-round, but snowfall is a rarer occurrence since temperatures usually remain several degrees above freezing during winter nights.

TGV trains to Paris take approximately three hours and forty minutes to reach the capital.

The protected location of Brest means that its harbour is ideal to receive any type of ship, from the smallest dinghy to the biggest aircraft carrier (USS Nimitz has visited a few times).

The importance of the service sector is still increasing while industrialised activity is decaying, explaining the unchanged rate of working-class in Brest.

The municipality launched a linguistic plan to revive Breton as a language through Ya d'ar brezhoneg on 16 June 2006.