Lorient (French: [lɔʁjɑ̃] ⓘ; Breton: An Oriant) is a town (commune) and seaport in the Morbihan department of Brittany in western France.

Ruins of Roman roads (linking Vannes to Quimper and Port-Louis to Carhaix) confirm Gallo-Roman presence.

[3] In June 1666, an ordinance of Louis XIV granted lands of Port-Louis to the company, along with Faouédic on the other side of the roadstead.

One of its directors, Denis Langlois, bought lands at the confluence of the Scorff and the Blavet rivers, and built slipways.

[4] The following years, the operation was almost abandoned, but in 1675, during the Franco-Dutch War, the French East Indies Company scrapped its base in Le Havre since it was too exposed during wartime, and transferred its infrastructures to l'Enclot, out of which Lorient grew.

[5] In 1700, the town grew out of l'Enclot following a law forcing people to leave the domain to move to the Faouédic heath.

Despite the economic bubble caused by the Company in 1720, the city was still growing[8] as it took part in the Atlantic triangular slave trade.

[9] In 1732, the Company decided to transfer its sales headquarters from Nantes to Lorient, and asked architect Jacques Gabriel to raise new buildings out of dimension stones to host these new activities, and to embellish the L'Enclos domain.

In 1738, there were 14,000 inhabitants, or 20,000 considering the outlying villages of Kerentrech, Merville, La Perrière, Calvin, and Keryado, which are now neighbourhoods within the present-day city limits.

Further work was undertaken as the streets began to be paved, wharves and slipways were built along the Faouédic river, and thatched houses were replaced with stone buildings following 18th-century classical architecture style as it was the case for l'Enclos.

[13] In 1769, the city evolved into a full-scale naval base for the Royal Navy when the King bought out the Company's infrastructures for 17,500,000 livres tournois.

When the war ended, transatlantic lines opened to the United States, and in 1785, a new commercial company started under Calonne's tutelage (then Controller-General of Finances) with the same goal as the previous entities, i.e. conducting trade in India and China, with again Lorient standing as its operative base.

The same year, the ironclad Couronne was built on a design directly inspired by the Gloire class, though unlike her wooden-hull predecessors, she was entirely made of iron.

Karl Dönitz, then supreme commander of the U-boat Arm, moved his staff into the Kernevel villa, just across the water from Keroman, in Larmor-Plage.

[19] According to the book Steel Boats, Iron Hearts (by former U-505 crewman Hans Goebeler), after the Allies failed to damage the U-boat bunkers the bombing shifted to the city itself to deny the Germans workers and other resources.

After the Normandy landings in June 1944 and the subsequent breakout, Lorient was surrounded by Allied troops on 12 August 1944.

Its usefulness as a naval base gone, Lorient was left in a state of siege, surrounded by the French Forces of the West, supported by a US Infantry Division.

In 1948, there were 28 settlements under the city's authority, and 20 more in the urban area, distributed among the neighboring towns of Ploemeur, Lanester, Hennebont and Quéven.

It used to operate direct flights to Paris and Lyon all year long and other city such as London and Porto in the Summer.

The Gare de Lorient is the railway station, offering connections to Quimper, Nantes, Rennes, Paris (less than three hours by TGV) and several regional destinations.

Each year in August since 1970, Lorient hosts the Festival interceltique, bringing together artists from all the Celtic world (Brittany, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Galicia, Asturias, Australia, Acadia and Isle of Man).

It is one of the biggest festivals in Europe by attendance (800,000 people for the 40th edition[39]) Lorient is home to TébéSud (formerly TyTélé), a local TV channel covering Morbihan through DTT.