After breakfast prepared by our host Valerie, we began our first full day in Caen by exploring the city, starting at the
Abbaye aux Hommes, walking about the ruined church St. Etienne, bombed by the allies in WW2. The entire centre of Caen was destroyed, the objective to destroy the towns and obliterate all communications and to slow German reinforcements. It wasn't until the morning of July 9th, a month after the D-Day landings that Caen was finally liberated by the Canadians. We continued on down
Rue A. de Caumont towards the Château du Caen, one of the largest of the ancient ramparts in Europe built by William during the second half of the fifth century. Caen Castle reflects the long history of relations between Normandy and England, from the Norman conquest in 1066 to the Hundred Years War to the Liberation in 1944. The City of William the Conqueror, or
Guillaume-le-Conquerant as they call him here is full of church spires, magnificent architecture mostly built after the war and crumbling walls of the 11th century. We found the place clean, friendly and with an excellent bus service which we used as much as possible being in the western part of the city, a few miles from
Centreville. It was a glorious sunny spring day as we climbed about the old castle, the occasional cry of a gull reminding us we were not far from the sea. Caen had the distinct feel of a provincial port with little signs of the police presence elsewhere, even after another terrorist attack in Paris the day before.
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| Eglise Notre-Dame de-Froiderue |
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| Grande Ombre, Rodin, 1902 |
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| the dungeon, 1120 |
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| La Maison des Quatrans, the oldest wooden house in Caen (14th century) |
We were told not to miss the Caen Memorial, a fairly new museum recounting the bombing of the city in the summer of 1944 and it's liberation, full of interesting artifacts gathered during the Hitler regime, from an old Enigma rotor machine used by the Kreigsmarine in 1943, a label from a can of Zyklon B gas used in the concentration camps to asphyxiate the Jews, and a child's shoe from Auschwitz. We caught the bus back into the city centre to pick up some supper and were in bed by 10. I had to keep reminding myself what day it was and what city we were in and, without updating this blog regularly, I think I would be lost! Tomorrow we are going to visit the Juno Beach Centre, located in Courseulles-sur-Mer, on the historic beach of the Canadian D-Day landings in June, 1944. It will be a challenge to absorb the enormity of this place after Vimy Ridge.
gws
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| Caen Memorial |
