back to main page Normandy

NORMANDY 

restaurant recommendations

Bayeux - Cathedral and Commonwealth cemetery

hotel recommendations

Bayeux and its tapestry-Generalities

What the tapestry tells us

To the northwest of the seminary rises the CATHEDRALE NOTRE DAME, certainly one of the most beautiful in France, built in the 11th century. Citizens consider it as an almighty beacon for the city. We owe it mainly to Odo, archbishop of Bayeux and brother in law of William the Conqueror (who will be present at the inauguration after which he imprisoned Odo, a future rival). Only the crypts and the parts of its west towers will survive from that era. It was inaccessible during hundreds of years but reopened.  Choir was rebuilt a century later and the chapels added in the 14th. The bulk of the stonework is in magnificent Gothic, though the central tower was added in the 15th and capped with a 19th century dome, highly disapproved by the critics.
Beautiful façade with its 5 sculpted portals. The work of successive centuries is clearly visible in the interior with its very vast proportions of the nave (102 meters long!). The typical Roman style decorated arches of the nave are surmounted by a 13th century clerestory and vaulting—though they is inevitable first caught by the sculpted pulpit, installed in 1787. Renaissance stalls rich master-altar of the of the 18th and in one of the side chapels you can see 13th century stained glass windows. Numerous chapels on both sides. Very luminous choir and 13th century paintings on the ceiling. Everywhere you look, you see rich furniture.  The crypt is decorated with delightful Gothic frescoes of angels playing musical instruments.
The MUSEE BARON GERARD is our next target. An ancient Episcopal palace displaying rich collections of different Bayeux families, the most important being of baron Gerard. It’s a cool, dark and soothingly crowd-free palace, with a collection of fine art, porcelain, furniture and lace for which a special room is dedicated.  On the first floor a display of paintings by Boucher, Champaigne, Boudin, David, Corot, etc….  It’s between the 17th and 19th century that Bayeux became a centre of lace making (10,000 in the area in 1860). See on the south side of the cathedral the “MUSEE DE LA DENTELLE” currently teaching the craft to 25 students. This school is housed in the same building as the MUSEE D’ART RELIGIEUX with religious objects out of the cathedral. Old manuscripts, sacerdotal clothes, gilded objects. One room recreates the scene in which the 15 years old Ste Therese asks the bishop of Bayeux for permission to enter a convent.
The war memorials BATAILLE DE NORMANDIE and the MEMORIAL GENERAL DE GAULLE have already been described in my essays “Landing sites memorials 2"

A little further along the same boulevard but on the other side of the road, facing the museum is THE BRITISH CEMETERY, the largest WWII BTITISH AND COMMONWEALTH WAR CEMETERY in France, containing Commonwealth 4648 graves, including soldiers from South Africa, Canada and Australia buried under sober and simple white pickets. There are 181 Canadians here; among them 21 members of the R.C.A.F. Polish graves are also to be found - men of the 1st Polish Armoured Division. Scattered throughout the cemetery are the graves of "CANLOAN" officers, young Canadians lent to the British Army. It is a serene place. The Stone of Remembrance is a depository, throughout the summer months, for wreaths and floral tributes left by veterans organizations of many lands. Let them rest in peace and lets’ observe a minute of silence, please. They gave their lives to liberate France.. You measure here the enormous part taken by Great Britain and the British Commonwealth in these combats. Without the help of our British friends, the departure and defeat of the nazis wouldn’t have been so easy.

Bibliography

A holiday history of France, by Ronald Hamilton (London-Hogarth press), Region Normandie, ses merveilles, ses cicatrices, by Louis Letellier (ed. Cloison, Rouen 1995), Identity of France, by Fernand Braudel (London, Fontana Press, “Our Bravest and Our Best: The Stories of Canada's Victoria Cross Winners” by Bishop, Arthur,  (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., 1995), “Courage Remembered: The Story Behind the Construction and Maintenance of the Commonwealth's Military Cemeteries and Memorials of the Wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945”.( Gibson, Edwin and G. Kingsley Ward. (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989.)

Bayeux contents

Cathedral and Commonwealth Cemetery