 Grand-Pré is listed as a World Heritage Site and is the main component of two National Historic Sites of Canada.Grand-Pré (French for "great meadow") is located on the shore of the Minas Basin, an area of tidal marshland, first settled about 1680 by Pierre Melanson dit La Verdure, his wife Marguerite Mius d'Entremont and their five young children who came from nearby Port-Royal which was the first capital of the French settlement of Acadia ("Acadie" in French).Pierre Melanson and the Acadians who joined him in Grand-Pré built dykes there to hold back the tides along the Minas Basin.