Bayeaux – River Aure
(Click on the images for a larger view)
Bayeux is linked to two famous cross-Channel invasions. The Norman conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066 is depicted in a famous tapestry that has been kept in Bayeux for so many centuries it now bears the town’s name.
On 6 June 1944 the Allied D-Day invasion force struck the beaches just north of the town. Bayeux was the first significant French town to be liberated from Nazi occupation during the 1944 Battle of Normandy and survived almost completely unscathed.
Having narrowly avoided most of the destruction and tragedy leading up to and following D-Day that other Normandy towns suffered meant that many of the medieval buildings in the town have remained intact.
Its medieval centre contains cobbled streets, half-timbered houses and the towering, Norman-Gothic Cathédrale Notre-Dame.
The river Aure flows through the very heart of Bayeux, offering panoramic views from a number of locations of old stone houses and waterwheels.
