Normandy

Normandy takes its name from the Norsemen who settled at the mouth of the Seine in the tenth century, and its history has been tied to the sea and to England ever since: in 1066 its duke, William, crossed the Channel and became king. Split in two in the 1950s, the region was reunited on 1 January 2016. Rouen, with its cathedral painted again and again by Monet, and Caen, William’s city, share the role of capital.

Its countryside is the very picture of rural France: hedged fields, apple and pear orchards, half-timbered farmhouses and brown-and-white cows in the Pays d’Auge, the Perche and the Bocage. The coast is just as varied, from the white cliffs of the Pays de Caux to the resorts of the Côte Fleurie and the immense tidal bay where the Mont-Saint-Michel rises from the sands, one of the sights that make people fall in love with France.

Between them lie the landing beaches of 6 June 1944, added to the World Heritage List in 2026, with their cemeteries, museums and quiet dunes. Normandy is close to Paris, which is why Parisians fill its seaside towns at weekends; go midweek, or head inland to the orchards and the Suisse normande valleys, and you will find it calm. The weather is changeable, and the light that drew the Impressionists comes with it.

• Tidal bay of the Mont-Saint-Michel
• White chalk cliffs of the Alabaster Coast
• Orchards and hedgerows of the Pays d’Auge
• D-Day beaches and dunes of Calvados and the Cotentin
• Wooded gorges of the Suisse normande
• Meanders of the Seine valley

Facts

• Lower Normandy and Upper Normandy were merged into a single region on 1 January 2016.
• Mont-Saint-Michel and its Bay were among the first French sites inscribed by UNESCO, in 1979.
• The Beaches of the D-Day Landings, Normandy, 1944 were inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2026.
• Le Havre, the city rebuilt by Auguste Perret after 1945, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2005.