Bayeux
With its perfectly preserved medieval ensemble, magnificent cathedral and world-famous tapestry, Bayeux is smaller and much more intimate than its near neighbour Caen, and a far more enjoyable place to visit. A mere 10km from the coast, Bayeux was the first French city to be liberated in 1944, the day after D-Day. Occupied so quickly that it escaped serious damage, it briefly became capital of Free France.
A grand eighteenth-century seminary, now remodelled as the Centre Guillaume le Conquérant, houses the extraordinary Bayeux Tapestry, known to the French as the Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde.
William the Bastard and the laundrywoman
William the Conqueror, or William the Bastard as he is more prosaically known in his homeland, was born in Falaise, 65km southeast of Caen. William’s mother, Arlette, a laundrywoman, was spotted by his father, Duke Robert of Normandy, at the washing place below the château. She was a shrewd woman, scorning secrecy in her eventual assignation by riding publicly through the main entrance to meet him. During her pregnancy, she is said to have dreamed of bearing a mighty tree that cast its shade over Normandy and England.
The Bayeux Tapestry
Created more than nine centuries ago, the 70m strip of linen known as the Bayeux Tapestry recounts the story of the Norman Conquest of England. The brilliance of its coloured wools has barely faded, and the tale is enlivened throughout with scenes of medieval life, popular fables and mythical beasts; its draughtsmanship, and the sheer vigour and detail, are stunning. Commissioned by Bishop Oddo, William’s half-brother, for the inauguration of Bayeux Cathedral in 1077, the work is thought to have been carried out by nuns in England, most likely in Canterbury.
The tapestry looks, and reads, like a modern comic strip. While it’s generally considered to be historically accurate, William’s justification for his invasion – that during an enforced sojourn after he was rescued by William following a shipwreck on the coast of northern France, Harold had sworn to accept him as King of England – remains in dispute.
In the tapestry itself, Harold is every inch the villain, with his dastardly little moustache and shifty eyes. At the point when he breaks his oath and seizes the throne, Harold looks extremely pleased with himself; however, his comeuppance swiftly follows, as William crosses the Channel and defeats the English armies at Hastings.
Caen
Few tourists go out of their way to visit Caen, capital and largest city of Basse Normandie. It was devastated during the fighting of 1944, so busy roads now fill the wide spaces where prewar houses stood, circling ramparts that no longer have a castle to protect. However, the former home to William the Conqueror remains impressive in parts, adorned with the scattered spires and buttresses of two abbeys and eight old churches, and makes a convenient base for the D-Day beaches.
Most of the centre is taken up with shopping streets and pedestrian precincts. The main city market takes place on Friday, spreading along both sides of Fosse St-Julien. The Bassin St-Pierre, the pleasure port at the end of the canal linking Caen to the sea, is the liveliest area in summer.
The spectacular Romanesque monument known as the Abbaye aux Hommes was founded by William the Conqueror and designed to hold his tomb within the huge, austere Romanesque church of St-Étienne. However, his burial here, in 1087, was hopelessly undignified. The funeral procession first caught fire and was then held to ransom, as factions squabbled over his rotting corpse for whatever spoils they could grab. During the Revolution the tomb was again ransacked, and now holds a solitary thigh-bone rescued from the river.
Corresponding to William the Conqueror’s Abbaye aux Hommes, across town, the Abbaye aux Dames holds the tomb of William’s queen, Mathilda, who commissioned the abbey church, La Trinité, well before the Conquest. It’s starkly impressive, with a gloomy pillared crypt, superb stained glass behind the altar, and odd sculptural details like the fish curled up in the holy-water stoup.
Cherbourg
Though its heyday as a transatlantic passenger port is now long gone, the sizeable town of Cherbourg, at the northern tip of the Cotentin peninsula, makes an appealing point of arrival in France. Its old town, immediately west of the quayside, is an intriguing maze of pedestrian alleys.
The tempting cluster of small shops and boutiques around place Centrale offers the chance to buy the city’s most famous product, the genuine Cherbourgumbrella, at 30 rue des Portes, while the excellent Thursday market is held on and off rue des Halles, near the majestic theatre with its belle époque facade. A pleasant stroll north leads to the Basilique de la Trinité and the former town beach, now grassed over to form the Plage Verte.
The Cotentin Peninsula
Hard against the frontier with Brittany, and cut off from the rest of Normandy by marshy terrain, the Cotentin peninsula has traditionally been seen as something of a backwater. By sea, on the other hand, it’s very easily accessible. Beyond the peninsula’s major port, Cherbourg, little ports such as Barfleur and St-Vaast on the indented northern headland presage the rocky Breton coast, while La Hague to the west offers a handsome array of heather-clad cliffs and stone-wall-divided patchwork fields.
The Cotentin’s long western flank, with its flat beaches, serves primarily as a prelude to Mont St-Michel, with hill towns such as Coutances and Avranches cherishing architectural and historical relics associated with the abbey. Halfway down, the walled port of Granville, a popular destination for French holiday-makers, is a sort of small-scale mirror-image of Brittany’s St-Malo.