Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Havre

Le Havre

When Francis I founded a new port in 1517, the new town took the name of a vanished chapel in the neighbouring village of Leure, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce: it would be Le Havre-de-Grâce. For the fishermen settled on the edge of the creek, a small wooden chapel with a thatched roof was first built, regularly flooded by the spring tides. Stone arrived with the bell tower, whose foundation stone was laid on 10 April 1539: a tall tower, crowned with a spire, in which a beacon was installed to guide ships approaching the port. The Wars of Religion struck it head-on. On 8 May 1562, the Huguenots rose up and sacked the church; in October, English troops commanded by the Earl of Warwick landed to hold the town. When the royal army came to retake it, on 15 July 1563, it bombarded the top of the bell tower to silence the artillery positioned there, and the town fell at the end of the month. With peace restored, the governor Sarlabos laid, on 28 April 1575, in the course of a great public ceremony, the foundation stone of the church that can be seen today. The building combines Flamboyant Gothic, Renaissance and classical; the Rouen architect Pierre Hardouin designed the great west façade in Caen stone in 1610. In 1637, Cardinal Richelieu, governor of the town, gave a great organ: the case was carved by Simon Levesque, the instrument delivered by Guillaume Lesselier, organ builder in Rouen. At the Revolution, the ransacked church became a Temple of Reason; the great rounded pediment of the façade was not put in place until 1827.

Wikipédia — Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Havre ↗

Getting there : Rue de Paris, in the centre of Le Havre (the postal address given by the Monumentum database is 27 Rue des Drapiers). Free entry according to the tourist office; opening times to be checked. The Le Havre Étretat tourist office offers guided tours of the cathedral (dates to be checked).

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

Ambient sound