Caen was one of the Norman cities that suffered damage during the war but did not look back, and so now fuses with modernity with history.
Before the Norman Conquest of England, it was the home city William and Matilda, and both are buried here in noble Romanesque abbeys. Caen is filled with greenery, as you can see at Château de Caen, a large park where William William's house stood before the French Revolution, now dotted with charming historical fragments like houses and old walls. The city is also an easy ride from the D-Day beaches, the Belle Époque resort of Cabourg and Bayeux where the famous tapestry is displayed. Let's explore the best things to do in Caen.
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1. Mémorial de Caen
Founded in 1988, the Mémorial de Caen is on top of an underground bunker from which the German general Wilhelm Richter coordinated the defense of Normandy’s beaches on D-Day.
You can walk through this 70-meter-long tunnel and then head up for broader exhibits about the Second World. The Mémorial de Caen describes itself as a “museum for peace”, with a message of hope.
The galleries chart the build-up to the conflict, the French occupation, holocaust and then the post-war era. There’s a newer exhibition about the Cold War, with artifacts like an East German Trabant car and a piece of the Berlin Wall.
2. Abbey of Sainte-Trinité
This Norman Romanesque abbey was founded in the middle of the 11th century by Matilda of Flanders, who was the wife of William the Conqueror.
Matilda’s tomb is in the abbey church and marked by an unassuming black stone with a Latin inscription laid at the time of her death, unlike William’s whose tomb at Caen’s Abbaye aux Hommes has been repeatedly updated.
The church is the only part of the abbey open to the public as the remainder holds government offices, but has lots to recommend it and provides several guided tours a day.
In the apse and choir try to get up close to the sculpted capitals, one of which shows William the Conqueror holding two lions on leashes, taken as prizes during the first crusade.
3. Château de Caen
In the middle ages Caen’s citadel, built by William the Conqueror in 1160, would have been a monumental landmark; even today it’s easy to get a sense of the dimensions in the park where the donjon and many houses used to be.
There are compelling fragments remaining, like the foundations of William’s residence, as well as the walls and two formidable gatehouses, which are still standing. These defenses are mostly from the Hundred Years’ War in the 1400s and the ramparts grant you a fantastic panorama of Caen.
It’s now a place for Caen locals to relax, with large lawns, two museums and a cafe.
4. Abbaye aux Hommes
William the Conqueror founded this monastery in 1063 to get an absence because of marrying Matilda of Flanders, who happened to be a cousin. This building is another Norman treasure of the Roman, with a stern, unadorned walls of the western façade crowned by more decorated gothic towers.
The must-see inside is William’s tomb, which has been in the chancel since 1087, while the wooden choir stalls and pulpit were crafted in the 1600s.
The convent buildings are quite unusual in that they escaped damage in both the revolution and the Second World War: In the cellar below the refectory is a medieval apple press still in working order.
5. Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen
At the Château de Caen, the city's art museum displays 350 works that guide you on your journey through French and European art from the 1300s to the present day. The galleries are weighted in the direction of renaissance and baroque, with works by Nicolas Muffsin and Rubens, as well as Italian masters like Veronese and Tintoretto.
The French movements during the 19th century are also well-documented, like romanticism from Delacroix, landscape painting by Boudin and realism by Courbet. There’s also a new contemporary wing and sculpture garden with works by Antoine Bourdelle and Huang Yong Ping.
6. Musée de Normandie
The other museum at the Château de Caen covers Normandy’s thousands of years of history and is in what used to be the governor’s residence. In the prehistory section, you can view 7,500-year-old ceramics, as well as tools and arrowheads discovered at a site in Vierville and Neolithic burial items discovered in Ecajeul.
In the classical history section the museum’s unmissable exhibit, The Mother Goddess of Saint-Aubin-Sur Mer, a large and expertly carved Roman sculpture discovered in a well in 1943.
You can also learn more about how the Vikings settled in Normandy in the 10th century, as well as traditional Norman costumes and savoir-faire, with fascinating exhibits about cider and cheese making in the past year.
7. Église Saint-Pierre
Caen’s majestic gothic and renaissance church is identified by its soaring spire, 76 meters in height and restored after it was hit by a shell in the Second World War. Saint-Pierre was built in several stages from the 1200s to the 1500s, the older parts being the choir, tower, and facades.
On the north side is a rose window famed for the lightness of its stonework. Inside take time to explore the magnificent gothic vaults in the choir and the late gothic ambulance chapels.
Then, on the north side of the nave are carved capitals with characters from Arthurian epic poems. If you know your stuff you’ll recognize Lancelot here.
8. Timber-Framed Houses
One of the reasons there aren’t as many timber-framed houses in Caen as other French medieval cities is that in 1524 this style of construction was abolished by the Norman Parliament as it was considered a fire hazard.
But there are two examples left and both are large: Near the Church of Saint-Pierre is the Maison des Quatrans, with wood and daub on a stone floor. It’s the oldest house in the city and was built by a rich tanner.
Then at 52 and 54, Rue Saint-Pierre is a pair of four-story 15th-century colombage houses, both anchored by high street shops but with fabulous carvings in their timbers.
9. La Colline aux Oiseaux
It’s hard to believe that this tranquil mosaic of gardens northwest of the center was once the site of the city dump and waste incinerators! The park was opened in 1994 to commemorate D-Day, and the name, “Hill of the Birds” is actually a reference to the mounds of rubbish that attracted flocks of birds.
Now it’s a place of repose for families and couples, with a large rose garden, a boxwood maze, a scale model of Normandy and several other small gardens commemorating cities around Normandy and Caen’s twin towns.
If you have kids in tow, call in at the zoo, which has tame farmyard animals for them to meet.
10. Jardin des Plantes
Also well worth a sunny stroll is Caen’s botanical garden, where 8,000 plant species are planted in 5,000 square meters of peaceful plots, including a medicinal garden, arboretum and various horticultural collections, all scrupulously arranged.
The original iron and glass greenhouses were sadly lost in the war, but were replaced in 1988 by an exotic greenhouse open from 13:00 – 17:00 and containing a nationally-recognized collection of Rhipsalis cacti, peperomia succulents, and sansevierias, which are native to southern Asia and Africa.
In the upper section of the gardens is a tree park where there’s a Japanese pagoda tree dating to 1750 and a redwood planted in 1890.
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