Anything of interest in Caen?

[TooTallMike]

I'm going to be in Caen for 3 days next week on business and I hope to find myself at a loose end for at least one afternoon. Does anyone know of any museums etc. worth visiting? (I won't have a car so it'd need to be within lanky legs' walking distance of the centre.)

 

Cheers - Mike

[Joris]

Don't go to the Memorial in Caen if you expect a D-Day oriented museum. It's okay for a war museum but I did not really like it.

[AlienFTM]

Pegasus Bridge is only a couple of miles down the road from the ferry terminal (not sure how far from the city though).

 

They finally had to replace the bridge (ISTR that they actually replaced the original many years ago, but the replacement was sympathetic to the significance) a few years ago. I hope it has been suitable preserved.

 

There's a slack handful of vehicles and guns there and a museum.

 

I remember the stairs down to the museum's cellar display. On the left were all the front pages from the newspapers, something like:

 

The Times: We Invade!

The Telegraph: 250,000 Troops Ashore!

The Sunderland Echo: Shop at Binns

 

(It's private joke. There was an invasion-related headline: the advert was in the next column and caught my eye rather more as someone who read the Echo right through his youth.)

[ghasp!]

I was in Normandy a few years back and they have tour routes all over the place marked with regular sign posts. If you're driving it's well worth the time to follow one or more of these routes. You can buy a book that guides you from site to site and explains what went on. There's often a bit of armour parked up as a memorial to what happened right there. I found that more 'real' than a lot of the museums.

[TooTallMike]

Thanks for those ideas. I'm only likely to have a few hours to spare and no car so I might try the memorial if nothing better presents itself. I expect the harbour might be quite interesting as well.

 

We camped next to Pegasus in 2004 and will again in 2009 but I never made it into Caen itself. Incidentally has anyone been to the undersea museum with the collection of vehicles pulled out of the sea? I intend to go there in 2009, as well as the newly-opened german bunker at Grandcamp-Maisy.

[ghasp!]

I've been to the wrecks museum, that was very interesting. I seem to remember that they'd a DD sherman on display. I probably have a guidebook or leaflet in the house somewhere...If you want to borrow some just let me know.

 

What I found interesting about Caen were the before and after photos. The pictures of the cathedral and town after the bombing had flattened them and turned them into piles of rubble ten or twenty feet high in places. Then post war, the French built it all back up again to look like it did before the war (the cathedral at least). :angel:

 

It wouldn't happen over here, they'd have just plonked down a concrete box and called it modern architecture. :schocked:

[Degsy]

The 'wrecks museum' at Port en Bessin is well worth a visit, I think it is one of the best museums, there is a film running constantly which is very interesting, you need most of a morning or afternoon to see everything properly. Incidentally a lot of the museums are in a price reduction scheme so make sure you read the ticket details and keep your tickets to claim discount when you visit another museum.

[TooTallMike]

I'm always fascinated looking at period photos alongside the modern-day location so I'll see what I can find on the web. If the weather's nice I might just walk around the town and compare.

 

Looks like the wrecks museum will have to wait until the 2009 trip so I can do it justice.

 

Cheers for all the thoughts.