Mayenne in the context of Ille-et-Vilaine

Maine (French: [mɛːn] ) is one of the traditional provinces of France. It corresponds to the former County of Maine, whose capital was also the city of Le Mans. The area, now divided into the departments of Sarthe and Mayenne, has about 857,000 inhabitants.

The Vilaine (French pronunciation: [vilɛn] ; Breton: Gwilen) is a river in Brittany, in the west of France. The river's source is in the Mayenne département (53), and it flows out into the Atlantic Ocean at Pénestin in the Morbihan département (56). It is 218 km long.

A longère is a type of longhouse typical of the regions of Brittany and Normandy in northwestern France. It is a long, narrow dwelling, developing along the axis of its peak, typically inhabited by farmers and artisans.

Longère also means a "long wall" or "gutter wall" of a building, whether for a church or house, in Lower Brittany.

Manche (/mɒ̃ʃ/; French: [mɑ̃ʃ] ; Norman: Maunche) is a coastal French department in Normandy on the English Channel, which is known as La Manche, literally "the sleeve", in French. Manche is bordered by Ille-et-Vilaine and Mayenne to the south, Orne and Calvados to the east, the English Channel to the west and north and by sharing maritime borders with the Crown Dependencies of Bailiwick of Jersey and Bailiwick of Guernsey of the United Kingdom to the west. It had a population of 495,045 in 2019.

Maine-et-Loire (French pronunciation: [mɛn e lwaʁ] ) is a department in the Loire Valley in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France. It is named after the two rivers, Maine and the Loire. It borders Mayenne and Sarthe to the north, Loire-Atlantique to the west, Indre-et-Loire to the east, Vienne and Deux-Sèvres to the south, Vendée to the south-west, and Ille-et-Vilaine to the north-west. Its prefecture is Angers; its subprefectures are Cholet, Saumur and Segré-en-Anjou Bleu. Maine-et-Loire had a population of 818,273 in 2019.

The Couesnon (French pronunciation: [kwenɔ̃] ; Breton: Kouenon) is a river running from the département of Mayenne in north-western France, forming an estuary at Mont-Saint-Michel. It is 97.8 km (60.8 mi) long, and its drainage basin is 1,124 km (434 sq mi). Its final stretch forms the border between the historical duchies of Normandy and Brittany. Its historically irregular course, shifting between two beds to the north and south of Mont-Saint-Michel until eventually settling on the southern one, inspired the saying Le Couesnon en sa folie mit le Mont en Normandie (“The Couesnon in its madness placed the Mont in Normandy") as the Mont is just to the Norman side of the river’s current mouth. However, the modern administrative boundary separating the two regions does not follow the river course; it is some six kilometres west of the Mont.

Fulgence Bienvenüe (French pronunciation: [fylʒɑ̃s bjɛ̃v(ə)ny]; 27 January 1852 – 3 August 1936) was a French civil engineer, best known for his role in the construction of the Paris Métro, and has been called "Le Père du Métro" (Father of the Metro).

A native of Uzel in Brittany, and the son of a notary, in 1872 Bienvenüe graduated from the École Polytechnique as a civil engineer and the same year he began working for the Department of Bridges and Roads at Alençon. His first assignment was the construction of new railway lines in the Mayenne area, in the course of which his left arm had to be amputated after being crushed in a construction accident.