Arbre de la Liberté de Bayeux

Bayeux

Facing Bayeux Cathedral, an immense plane tree has watched over the town for more than two centuries, the last survivor of a quartet planted together under the name of the 'four Liberty Trees.' Its planting, on 30 March 1797, owes much to the initiative of a local politician, Gabriel Moisson de Vaux, who according to tradition took this young tree from a row planted a few years earlier to adorn the passage of King Louis XVI on his visit to Bayeux — a powerful symbol of the shift from an old world to the new era opened by the Revolution. In the following decades, while royalist sympathies remained strong in Normandy, the tree escaped several attempts to fell it, a fate its three companions did not share. Having become an openly embraced symbol of the town's republican memory, it was classified a Natural Monument as early as 1932, then received the national 'Remarkable Tree of France' label in October 2000. Even today, its tall silhouette dominates the courtyard of the former bishopric, between the towers of the cathedral and the medieval lanes, offering visitors a rare shortcut between two histories of France: that of the coronation of kings, and that of the birth of modern citizenship, planted a few meters apart.

Getting there : In central Bayeux, a few steps from Notre-Dame Cathedral, in the former courtyard of the bishopric

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound