{"id":3575,"date":"2023-11-16T11:33:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T10:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rochelets.plune.fr\/five-things-you-may-not-know-about-saint-brevins-ocean-snake\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T16:02:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T15:02:17","slug":"five-things-you-may-not-know-about-saint-brevins-ocean-snake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/five-things-you-may-not-know-about-saint-brevins-ocean-snake\/","title":{"rendered":"Five things you may not know about Saint-Brevin’s Ocean Snake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the beach at Saint-Br\u00e9vin-les-Pins, near Saint-Nazaire in Loire-Atlantique, the serpent d’Oc\u00e9an attracts the curious. Here are 5 things you need to know about this spectacular work of art, which appears at every tide. <\/p>\n\n

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How big is it?<\/h2>\n\n

Located north of Saint-Br\u00e9vin-les-Pins, on the Nez de Chien beach, the Serpent d’Oc\u00e9an takes the form of a sea serpent skeleton measuring 120 meters in length. It looks like a mega-dinosaur skeleton straight out of a natural history museum<\/strong>! At low tide, you can walk around it. Many tourists come to take photos in front of the animal’s gaping maw. <\/p>\n\n

When was it built?<\/h2>\n\n

Now one of Saint-Brevin’s must-see sites<\/a>, the Serpent d’Oc\u00e9an was created in 2012 as part of the third Estuaire contemporary art biennial<\/strong>. This monumental sculpture is part of the Estuaire Nantes Saint-Nazaire<\/a> itinerary, an itinerary of 34 works of contemporary art by today’s leading artists, accessible by road, bike or boat. <\/p>\n\n

Who designed it?<\/h2>\n\n

Le serpent d’Oc\u00e9an is a work of art conceived by Huang Yong Ping<\/strong>, a Chinese artist exiled to France in 1989 after the tragic events of Tien An Men Square. A major figure in the Chinese artistic avant-garde<\/strong> of the 1980s, Huang Yong Ping is known for his monumental creations influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism.<\/strong> After living and working in France for 30 years, he became an honorary citizen of the town of Saint-Brevin <\/strong>in 2014. He died in 2019, aged 65. <\/p>\n\n

How was it made?<\/h2>\n\n

This gigantic snake is made of marine aluminum, a high-strength metal<\/strong> used by the Chantiers de l’Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire and the Airbus site on the opposite shore. The snake’s skeleton is made up of 154 parts<\/strong> (vertebrae, ribs, jaws and head). Each element was cast in a workshop in China. A metal “bone marrow” runs through the entire skeleton to articulate the 135 vertebrae<\/strong>, and steel posts support the structure of the sea monster. The installation took eight weeks<\/strong>! <\/p>\n\n

And why is the Serpent d’Oc\u00e9an displacing the Louvre on Google Street View?<\/h2>\n\n

Did you know that the Saint-Brevin snake is the second most searched site on Google Street View, behind the Eiffel Tower <\/strong>? Discovered on Google Maps by a user who described it as a skeleton of Titanoboa<\/a>, the largest snake ever known from the Jurassic period, the Serpent d’Oc\u00e9an went viral on social networks! <\/p>\n\n

photo\u00a9La V\u00e9lodyss\u00e9e\/ A. LAMOUREUX<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the beach at Saint-Br\u00e9vin-les-Pins, near Saint-Nazaire in Loire-Atlantique, the serpent d’Oc\u00e9an attracts the curious. Here are 5 things you need to know about this spectacular work of art, which appears at every tide. How big is it? Located north of Saint-Br\u00e9vin-les-Pins, on the Nez de Chien beach, the Serpent d’Oc\u00e9an takes the form of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-non-categorise"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3576,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3575\/revisions\/3576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochelets.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}