Trinite (12th century).  The prefecture occupies the buildings of the famous abbey of St. Aubin; in its courtyard are elaborately sculptured arcades of the 11th and 12th centuries, from which period dates the tower, the only survival of the splendid abbey-church.  Ruins of the old churches of Toussaint (13th century) and Notre-Dame du Ronceray (11th century) are also to be seen.  The castle of Angers, an imposing building girt with towers and a moat, dates from the 13th century and is now used as an armoury.  The ancient hospital of St. Jean (12th century) is occupied by an archaeological museum; and the Logis Barrault, a mansion built about 1500, contains the public library, the municipal museum, which has a large collection of pictures and sculptures, and the Musee David, containing works by the famous sculptor David d’Angers, who was a native of the town.  One of his masterpieces, a bronze statue of Rene of Anjou, stands close by the castle.  The Hotel de Pince or d’Anjou (1523-1530) is the finest of the stone mansions of Angers; there are also many curious wooden houses of the 15th and 16th centuries.  The palais de justice, the Catholic institute, a fine theatre, and a hospital with 1500 beds are the more remarkable of the modern buildings of the town.  Angers is the seat of a bishopric, dating from the 3rd century, a prefecture, a court of appeal and a court of assizes.  It has a tribunal of first instance, a tribunal of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, a branch of the Bank of France and several learned societies.  Its educational institutions include ecclesiastical seminaries, a lycee, a preparatory school of medicine and pharmacy, a university with free faculties (facultes libres) of theology, law, letters and science, a higher school of agriculture, training colleges, a school of arts and handicrafts and a school of fine art.  The prosperity of the town is largely due to the great slate-quarries of the vicinity, but the distillation of liqueurs from fruit, cable, rope and thread-making, and the manufacture of boots and shoes, umbrellas and parasols are leading industries.  The weaving of sail-cloth and woollen and other fabrics, machine construction, wire-drawing, and manufacture of sparkling wines and preserved fruits are also carried on.  The chief articles of commerce, besides slate and manufactured goods, are hemp, early vegetables, fruit, flowers and live-stock.

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Angers, capital of the Gallic tribe of the Andecavi, was under the Romans called Juliomagus.  During the 9th century it became the seat of the counts of Anjou (q.v.).  It suffered severely from the invasions of the Northmen in 845 and the succeeding years, and of the English in the 12th and 15th centuries; the Huguenots took it in 1585, and the Vendean royalists were repulsed near it in 1793.  Till the Revolution, Angers was the seat of a celebrated university founded in the 14th century.