Île de Sein

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Coordinates: 48°02′12″N 4°50′58″W / 48.03667, -4.84944

Commune of Île-de-Sein

Enez-Sun

Close-up of the island

Location

Coordinates

48°02′12″N 4°50′58″W / 48.03667, -4.84944

Administration

Pont-Croix

none as of 2007

Alain Le Roy
(2001-2008)

Statistics

Elevation

0 m–9 m

Land area^¹

0.58 km²

Population^²
(1999)

242

- Density

417/km² (1999)

Miscellaneous

INSEE/Postal code

29083/ 29990

¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

² Population sans doubles comptes: residents of multiple communes (e.g. students and military personnel) only counted once.

Location of Île de Sein in the English Channel.

The Île de Sein is a French island in the Atlantic Ocean, off Finistère, 8 kilometres from pointe du Raz (Raz meaning tidal race), from which it is separated by the Raz de Sein. Its Breton name is Enez Sun. The island, with its neighbouring islets, forms the territory of the commune of Île-de-Sein, part of the department of Finistère and the administrative region of Bretagne.

Administratively, it is a commune named Île-de-Sein located in the Finistère département.

Vieille lighthouse on the Raz de Sein; the island in the background

It is on the sea routes going south from the English Channel. The island was known for its wreckers, and is well known for the dangers of its waters, the Chaussée de Sein, a vast zone of reefs stretching more than thirty miles from east to west, requiring numerous lighthouses, beacons, and buoys.

During World War II, every single male resident of the island of military age (a total of 124 men aged 14 to 54) fled to London to join Charles de Gaulle's Free French within days of the French surrender to Germany in June 1940. In 1946, the island as a whole was admitted into the extremely select Order of the Liberation for this feat and its residents were exempted from paying income tax, a privilege they enjoy to this day.

During the 1960s, famous Parisian artists Maurice Boitel and Jean Rigaud painted in the Île de Sein.