5 Days in Normandy

The cathedral is the reason to start here. In 1892 and 1893 Claude Monet rented rooms across the street and painted its west front more than thirty times, in every kind of light, so the real subject of the series is the weather. The cast-iron spire, 151 meters high, made it the tallest building in the world when it was finished in 1876, until Cologne Cathedral overtook it in 1880. The squat tower on the side is the Tour de Beurre, the "butter tower", paid for with the alms people gave for permission to eat dairy during Lent.

Allied bombers hit the cathedral on the night of 18-19 April 1944, destroying much of the south aisles and blowing out the rose windows, and the rebuilding took until 1956. The crypt can only be seen on a guided visit.

Next to the cathedral, in the old archbishop's palace, the Historial tells the story of the trial and of the legend that grew from it. It is a digital visit rather than a museum of objects: you walk through the building, from the Gothic crypt up to the grand attic, following the investigation that led to the 1456 retrial that cleared Joan, then finish in three multimedia rooms on how her myth was built over the following centuries.

The background helps, because the Historial assumes you know the outline. Joan was captured by Burgundians in 1430 and handed to the English, who held Rouen, and she was tried by Bishop Pierre Cauchon, an ally of theirs. If you want something old and tangible, the keep of Rouen's castle, the Tour Jeanne d'Arc, is where she was threatened with torture, although she was held in a tower that no longer exists.

Walk west along the Rue du Gros-Horloge to the square where it ended. On 30 May 1431 Joan was taken to the Vieux-Marché, her sentence was read out, and she was burned at the stake. Her ashes were thrown into the Seine. When the retrial of 1456 overturned the verdict, the court ordered a cross to be raised on the spot.

The modern church on the square, Sainte-Jeanne-d'Arc, was consecrated in 1979 and looks like an upturned Viking boat or a fish, depending on your mood. The concrete is not why you come in. Along the north wall are thirteen stained-glass windows from about 1520-1530, saved from the church of Saint-Vincent, which was destroyed in 1944, and they are some of the best color in the city.

La Couronne sits on the same square and calls itself the oldest inn in France: a deed from 1345 mentions a house named La Couronne by the fish market. Julia Child ate her first meal in France here in November 1948, oysters, sole meunière and Chablis, and later called that lunch a turning point that led her to French cooking. The restaurant is happy to tell you.

This is the place to try canard à la rouennaise, the pressed duck that is Rouen's grand dish. It is a formal restaurant, so look at the lunch menu on its website before you go. If it's too much for the budget, the crêperies on the streets around the square make a fine cheaper lunch.

The Gros-Horloge is the great clock that spans the Rue du Gros-Horloge on a Renaissance arch, with a dial 2.5 meters across and a single hand ending in a lamb. The mechanism inside the belfry dates from 1389 and is one of the oldest in France. The story goes that the city's belfry was torn down after the Harelle revolt of 1382 and the people were forbidden to build another, so they built a clock tower in 1398 instead, which was a belfry in all but name.

The visit climbs from the Renaissance pavilion over the street up to the Gothic belfry, past the double dial with its moon globe and the old clock mechanism, and ends with a view over the city. Allow 35-40 minutes with the audioguide. Until the end of May 2027 entry is capped at 19 people at a time, which is why you don't leave it to the end of the day.

Walk east to the Gothic church of Saint-Maclou, rebuilt from 1436, and then to the strangest corner of the city, the Aître Saint-Maclou just behind it. An aître was a parish cemetery, and this one dates to the Black Death of 1348. When plague came again in the 1500s there was no more room, so the parish built galleries around the yard (1526-1533) with lofts to store the bones that were dug up to make space. Look at the beams, which are carved with macabre motifs.

It is one of the few ossuaries of this kind left in Europe, and it was an art school until 2014.

End the day on the Rue Eau-de-Robec and the lanes around it, where the old half-timbered houses survive. The street follows a stream, the Robec, which ran through here until 1943 and was lined with dyers. A 16th-century writer complained that the water ran blue, red, green or violet depending on which dyers were working upstream.

The pedestrian part of the street is a good place for a last stroll in Rouen. Find a crêperie, drink a cidre (apple cider), and turn in early: tomorrow is a long drive.

Étretat is a small seaside town whose white chalk cliffs are cut into arches and a sharp needle. Courbet painted the cliffs after a storm, and Monet painted the arches and stacks. Maurice Leblanc, who wrote much of the Arsène Lupin series here, set The Hollow Needle among these cliffs in 1909, and his house is now the Clos Lupin museum.

Climb the stairs at the left end of the main beach to the Falaise d'Aval for the view of the Porte d'Aval arch and the Aiguille, which rises about 70 meters; some cliffs here reach 90. It is a steep walk with stairs and slopes, not a stroll.

The cliff on the other side of town, the Falaise d'Amont, is the easier walk. It leads up to the chapel of Notre-Dame de la Garde and a monument to the aviators Nungesser and Coli, who set off to fly the Atlantic non-stop on 8 May 1927. Their plane, L'Oiseau Blanc, was last seen at Étretat.

The Jardins d'Étretat sit up here, a mix of clipped greenery and sculpture with a view of the Needle. Worth an hour if you like gardens, a skip if you only came for the cliffs.

Honfleur is about an hour by car from Étretat, and the drive crosses the Seine estuary on the Pont de Normandie, a toll bridge for cars (pedestrians and cyclists don't pay). When you arrive, eat before you look around: fish soup, mussels, or a galette with cheese. The restaurants right on the quays of the harbor are the obvious choice and priced for the view. Walk one street back for the same cooking at a lower price.

Honfleur is a trading port that turned into a postcard. The Vieux Bassin, the old harbor, was dug out by Abraham Duquesne in 1684 and extended in the 1720s, and it is lined with tall slate-fronted houses and the 17th-century salt warehouses where salt for the cod fishery was stored. The Lieutenance, the old gate by the entrance to the harbor, is all that survives of the town's defenses. From here ships left for the Americas, and Samuel de Champlain sailed repeatedly from Honfleur before founding Quebec in 1608. That trade also made Honfleur one of France's main slave-trading ports, the less cheerful footnote on this pretty harbor.

The painters of the École de Honfleur, Boudin, Courbet, Monet and Jongkind, worked in this light, and Erik Satie was born on a street nearby. Walk the quays once, then go up a side street.

Honfleur's other must-stop is its wooden church, built in the second half of the 15th century after the Hundred Years' War by the town's ship carpenters, who used axes rather than saws. Inside, the nave looks like an upturned ship's hull, and the oak pillars are different lengths because the trunks weren't tall enough. The bell tower stands apart from the church, probably so that a fire in one wouldn't take the other.

The outside is clad in chestnut shingles. It is one of the largest wooden churches in France.

Honfleur to Bayeux is about 90 km, more than an hour, so you'll arrive in the evening. Check in, then walk to dinner. Le Pommier, on the Rue des Cuisiniers, serves seasonal regional cooking, and the crêperie Le Moulin de la Galette, on the Rue de Nesmond, has a big terrace.

Order a Normandy dish: a Camembert plate, mussels in cream, or a tarte normande for dessert. Bayeux is small and goes quiet early, so book if you can.

Bayeux is a small town, but its cathedral is large. It was consecrated on 14 July 1077 in the presence of William the Conqueror by his half-brother Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, who is thought to have commissioned the Bayeux Tapestry, and the embroidery was probably hung here for the first time. After fires in 1105 and 1160 the building was rebuilt, and it mixes Romanesque and Gothic.

Now the part to know before you come. The Bayeux Tapestry Museum has been closed for renovation since 2025, and the museum says it will stay closed until autumn 2027. The embroidery itself, nearly 70 meters long and 50 centimeters tall, is on loan to the British Museum in London from 10 September 2026 to 11 July 2027. So don't plan this trip around it. The Bayeux Museum has put the whole thing online scene by scene, and if you read it before you stand in the nave, the church makes more sense.

The Memorial Museum covers the 76 days that followed the landings, which many visitors skip in favor of the beaches. That is a mistake: D-Day was one day, and the battle for Normandy went on for weeks. A line in Latin on the front says that in 1944 the British came to liberate the people they had been beaten by in 1066, which sums up Bayeux in one sentence.

Across the road is the Bayeux War Cemetery, the biggest Commonwealth cemetery of the Second World War in France, with 4,648 graves, and the Bayeux Memorial, which names more than 1,800 soldiers with no known grave. More than 500 of the graves belong to other nationalities, mostly German. It is free, quiet, and worth ten minutes even if you read nothing.

Eight kilometers north of Bayeux, off the D514, is a German coastal battery with its guns still in place: a command post and four casemates, several still holding their original 150 mm guns. Standing next to a gun that size, with the sea behind it, explains the scale of the Atlantic Wall better than any museum.

Don't miss the fire-control post at the cliff edge.

Arromanches is where the invasion solved its biggest problem: how to land supplies without a deep-water port. The Allies towed in floating concrete caissons from England and built an artificial harbor, called Mulberry, in the middle of Gold Beach. Planners reckoned the Mulberries would have to handle 12,000 tons of supplies a day, and this one kept working for months, long past the three it was designed for. Arromanches was spared the heaviest fighting on D-Day so that the work could go ahead, and sections of the harbor still sit on the sand and out at sea.

Start with the free part: walk the beach and look at the concrete blocks. The Musée du Débarquement has models that make sense of what you are looking at. The crêperies are fine for a late lunch.

Twenty kilometers further east, at Courseulles-sur-Mer, the Juno Beach Centre tells the Canadian story of the Second World War. Juno Beach was taken by the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division, which pushed farther inland on D-Day than any other Allied landing force. The museum is modern and personal, built around the stories of the Canadians who landed.

The bunker tour (April to October) takes you through the German bunkers in front of the museum and adds 4.50 EUR to the museum ticket.

Back in Bayeux, À la Reine Mathilde has been selling pastries and chocolate since 1898. It is open Tuesday to Saturday 9am-1pm and 2:30pm-7pm, Sunday morning only, and closed on Mondays, so a Friday works.

For dinner, pick a traditional Norman restaurant or a crêperie from the tourist office's list. Order what you didn't have last night: a plate of cheese with Livarot or Pont-l'Évêque, or a glass of Calvados.

Pointe du Hoc is a headland with a 30-35 meter cliff, 6.5 km west of the middle of Omaha Beach, where the Germans built a battery. On the morning of 6 June 1944 the US 2nd Ranger Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder had to climb it. The boats came in about 40 minutes late, at 7:10am, with roughly half the force they started with, and the Rangers went up on ropes and 100-foot ladders borrowed from the London Fire Brigade.

What you see today is a field of shell craters and wrecked concrete, and it is moving because nobody has tidied it. A restoration project to protect the cliff from erosion runs from 2026 to mid-2027: the site stays open and free, but the visitor center is closed, access is along the west pathway only, and parts of the site, including some bunkers, are closed.

Omaha Beach is eight kilometers of gently curved sand, with bluffs 30-50 meters high behind it. That is exactly why it was so hard. The Americans landed under fire from strong points at the exits through the bluffs and took about 2,400 casualties on 6 June, although 34,000 men were ashore by nightfall.

Walk down to the water, ideally at low tide when the sand is wide, and look back at the bluffs. There's a museum behind the beach at Saint-Laurent, the Musée Mémorial d'Omaha Beach, but the beach does the work. Take a few minutes in silence before you head to the cemetery.

The Overlord Museum is about a kilometer from the American cemetery, and holds more than 10,000 pieces, including over 40 vehicles, tanks and guns, with life-size scenes from the American, British and Canadian sectors. An 88 mm German anti-aircraft gun stands outside.

It's the best stop for anyone interested in vehicles and equipment, and a good one with children. If you're short on time, skip it: the Memorial Museum in Bayeux already covers the wider campaign.

The Normandy American Cemetery overlooks Omaha Beach from Colleville-sur-Mer, with about 9,390 white crosses and Stars of David in neat rows, a chapel, and the Garden of the Missing. The visitor center by the entrance has exhibitions and films on the operation. This is where the day lands for most people.

The American Battle Monuments Commission runs it. It is open daily from 9am, to 5pm in winter and later in summer, except on 25 December and 1 January, and a short ceremony lowers the flag about an hour before closing. There are security checks at the entrance, so leave large bags in the car.

On the way back to Bayeux, stop at Port-en-Bessin, a working fishing port on the coast north of town. The scallop season in the Seine Bay usually opens on 1 October, so from autumn the coquille Saint-Jacques is the thing to order, seared or in a cream sauce, alongside the day's fish.

Eat at a restaurant by the harbor and watch the boats. Nobody comes to Port-en-Bessin for monuments, which makes it a good place to end a heavy day.

The car parks are on the mainland about 2.5 km from the rock, and the free shuttle, Le Passeur, runs between them and the Mont. The shuttle is free for everyone, but if you have 40 minutes and decent weather, walk instead: the approach is the best way to see the Mont grow from a shape on the horizon into a castle-like village. The bridge and the dam are new. After the old car park and causeway were removed, a tidal dam (built from 2009) and a light bridge opened in 2014 to let the water flow around the Mont again and stop the bay from silting up.

The tides here range about 14 meters between high and low, and the Mont is surrounded by water only on the highest tides. The tourist office publishes the tide times, so check them before you set your schedule.

According to the legend, the Archangel Michael appeared to Aubert, bishop of Avranches, in 708 and told him to build a sanctuary on the rock. Mont-Saint-Michel became a Benedictine abbey and a pilgrimage site that the Norman dukes paid to expand, and it appears in the Bayeux Tapestry, where Harold pulls two Norman soldiers out of quicksand in the bay. After a fire in 1204 King Philip Augustus gave a grant to rebuild in the new Gothic style, and the result is the Merveille, the "wonder". After the Revolution the abbey became a prison and stayed one until 1863, long after Victor Hugo and others began campaigning to save it. Since 2001 a community of monks and nuns has lived here again.

The visit climbs to the abbey church at the top and then works down through the Merveille. It is steep, strollers must be folded, and everyone goes through a bag check. The abbey is crowded later in the day, so go first thing.

The Mont's famous dish is the omelette from the inn of Mère Poulard (Anne Boutiaut, 1851-1931). It is a ritual, and an expensive one: the village lives from tourism, with about 50 shops for three million visitors a year. If you want a proper meal, order the lamb. Agneau de pré-salé, raised on the salt marshes of the bay, has a protected AOP name, and only about 1,500 lambs a year carry it.

Or bring a sandwich and eat on the ramparts. The village is a commune, free to enter at any hour.

The Grande Rue climbs from the gate past shops, the parish church and the inns. Only 23 people lived on the island in 2023, which says what the village is for. Go up it once for the atmosphere, then leave it for the ramparts.

The ramparts are quieter and give you the view over the bay and the tidal flats.

Before you leave, walk out on the bridge and watch the tide. Medieval pilgrims called the Mont Saint Michael in peril of the sea, and the bay is still dangerous: quicksand and a tide with a 14-meter range make crossing it on your own a bad idea. The tourist office lists guides for walks across the bay, and that is the way to do it.

Watch the water move around the rock, then drive back to Bayeux or on to Pontorson and Brittany.