ADHEOS is the LGBTI association for Charente-Maritime and the departments around it, and its La Rochelle base is at 21 Rue de la Sardinerie, in a shared council building just behind the Vieux Port.
This is not a drop-in centre. La Rochelle is an antenna rather than one of the association's staffed centres, so a meeting is arranged by phone or mail first. What is on offer once you are in is substantial: legal advice on discrimination, support through a gender transition, and help with an asylum claim based on sexual orientation or gender identity, which the association is formally accredited to accompany.
For a visitor it is the one LGBTI address in the city that is not a bar or a sauna, and the place to turn if something goes wrong.
The people in this picture are AI-generated.
