Angers is a city in western France, about 300 km southwest of Paris. It is the prefecture of the Maine-et-Loire department and was the capital of the province of Anjou until the French Revolution. The inhabitants of both the city and the province are called Angevins or, more rarely, Angeriens.

Angers was an important French city during the Middle-Ages. There is one of the bigger castles of Europe in the city. It is now the 16th city of France (for its population).

Angers received its first bishop in 372 during the election of Martin of Tours. The first abbey, Saint-Aubin, was built during the 7th century to house the sarcophagus of Saint Albinius. Saint-Serge Abbey was founded by the Merovingian kings Clovis II and Theuderic III a century later. In 2008, ten Frankish sarcophagi from that period were discovered where Saint-Morille church once stood during the tramway construction.^[31]

From the 850s, Angers suffered from its situation on the border with Brittany and Normandy. In September 851, Charles the Bald and Erispoe, a Breton chief, met in the town to sign the Treaty of Angers, which secured Breton independence and fixed the borders of Brittany. However, the situation remained dangerous for Angers, and Charles the Bald created in 853 a wide buffer zone around Brittany comprising parts of Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Sées, which was ruled by Robert the Strong, a great-grandfather of Hugh Capet.

In 870, the Viking chief Hastein seized Angers where he settled until a successful siege temporarily displaced him. He again took control of the town in 873, before the Carolingian Emperor ousted him.