The Jardin des Plantes as an open-air club room
The partnership between the club, the Jardin des Plantes and the City of Nantes produced a space with six integrated chess tables, inaugurated on 5 June 2021. By 2024, the FFE was describing four years of cooperation and club-run activity around the tables, showing that the site had developed into a recurring place for chess.
Échec et Mat reached its sixth season in the Jardin des Plantes in 2026. The previous edition, in 2025, combined free play, instruction, blindfold displays and a presentation of boards for blind or partially sighted people.
At that edition, the permanent space served as an introduction to several ways of engaging with chess.
A Nantes club since 1967
Founded in 1967, Cercle d'Échecs de Nantes supports leisure play alongside individual and team competition. Its youth pathways connect first instruction, further development and gradual entry into organized chess.
A 1992 episode brought the club into direct contact with the French national team. Before the Manila Olympiad, it helped arrange a week-long camp at FC Nantes's La Jonelière complex.
Iossif Dorfman led the chess training while FC Nantes trainers handled physical preparation.
A rapid tradition with a youth counterpart
In 2023, the club's Tournoi Rapide Arnous de Rivière reached its twenty-fifth edition. FFE records then list a twenty-seventh Open Rapide de Nantes in 2025 and a twenty-eighth in 2026, describing it as the circle's annual rapid tournament.
In 2026, an annual youth rapid was held alongside it.
Chess in the life of the city
The Jardin des Plantes is the clearest expression of a wider urban presence. The club ran two chess days at the Médiathèque Jacques Demy in 2021, returned repeatedly to the Rendez-vous de l'Erdre with free play and instruction, and presented activities at the Château des Ducs in 2025 and 2026.
These collaborations place the club in cultural venues and festivals that are not devoted to chess.
Sources
- 1.CEN - CERCLE D'ÉCHECS DE NANTES, Cercle d'Échecs de Nantes
- 2.Cercle d'Echecs de Nantes, Fédération Française des Échecs
- 3.Cercle d'Echecs de Nantes, Nantes, ville et métropole
- 4.Historique, Cercle d'Échecs de Nantes
- 5.Cercle d'Échecs de Nantes, Saint-Joseph du Loquidy
Show 9 more sources
- 6.1992 : préparation des olympiades, Cercle d'Échecs de Nantes
- 7.Les échecs dans la cité, Cercle d'Échecs de Nantes
- 8.Inauguration de l'espace échecs au jardin des plantes de Nantes, Fédération Française des Échecs
- 9.NANTES (44) - Echec et Mat au Jardin des Plantes - 25 mai 2024, Fédération Française des Échecs
- 10.Le Cercle d'échecs de Nantes au Jardin des Plantes, Nantes, ville et métropole
- 11.NANTES (44) - 25e tournois Rapide Arnous de Rivière - 19 mars 2023, Fédération Française des Échecs
- 12.27eme Open Rapide de Nantes, Fédération Française des Échecs
- 13.28eme Open Rapide de Nantes, Fédération Française des Échecs
- 14.28e Open Rapide Jeunes de Nantes, Fédération Française des Échecs
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