A rich natural heritage.

The Parc Naturel Régional des Boucles de la Seine Normande lies between Rouen and Le Havre, in the Eure and the Seine-Maritime départements. Shaped by the meanders of the Seine, the area provides glorious panoramas and sweeps of well-watered meadows. Plateaux, valleys and hillsides carved out by the river make up the landscapes of the five natural regions of the Park: the Seine valley, the Pays de Caux, the Roumois, the Basse Vallée de la Risle and the Marais Vernier.
Three abbeys, rural museums, châteaux and thatched cottages forge the identity of the Park's cultural heritage. The wetlands, the Park's ecological highlight, sink into soft silences, punctuated by pollarded trees.
There are natural sites to be visited in the Marais Vernier and the Basse Vallée de la Risle, with or without a guide. These habitats, which are of vital importance to the Park as a whole, are the subject of special awareness and preservation campaigns.

Le Havre by the sea.

Spend 1h30min aboard the "Ville de Fécamp" to discover France's leading freight and container port.
The many activities of the port of Le Havre are best appreciated from the sea. Weather permitting, you will sail along the coastline of Le Havre to appreciate the town that was rebuilt after the Second World War by Auguste Perret, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Timeless Corneille...

Pierre Corneille is one of France's greatest 17th century playwrights.
Born in Rouen in 1606, the son of a magistrate, Corneille was initially destined for a career in the law. Life was to decide otherwise, however. It was after suffering a disappointment in love in 1629 that he began writing poetry and his first play.
With comedies such as Clitandre, La Veuve, La Galerie du Palais, La Suivante, La Place Royale, Médée and L'Illusion comique, he created a new form of theatre in which tragic sentiments were expressed in a contemporary context.
Corneille went on to become an "official" playwright to Cardinal Richelieu, writing plays glorifying nobility, such as the famous Le Cid.
He was elected to the Académie Française in 1647. His plays began to enjoy less success, however, with competition from Jean Racine, whose plays were more sentimental and less heroic than those of his rival.
Corneille never ceased experimenting with new ideas, however, and later returned to Greek tragedy in Oedipe.
After a life of triumphs and disappointments, Corneille died in Paris on 1 October 1684.

The genius and the mountain.

Victor Hugo, poet, literary master and author of such great works as Les Misérables, Choses vues, Notre-Dame de Paris, Dernier jour d'un condamné, was also driven into exile on account of his passionate opposition to the imperialism of Napoleon III, brandishing the written word like a sword.

Unrivalled in Europe.

Since 1921, the church of Saint-Laurent (15th and 16th century) has housed a collection of wrought ironwork that was and is a reference of its kind in Europe.
Its donor Henri Le Secq des Tournelles made over to the city of Rouen the first methodical collection of ironwork, begun in 1862 by his father Jean-Louis Le Secq Destournelles (1818-1882).

The latter, a member of the Mission Héliographique mounted by Prosper Mérimée to take photographs of outstanding monuments on behalf of the French Monuments Historiques department, was at once a practical, hands-on man, a painter and an art-lover. His was the original idea of taking an interest in hitherto overlooked objects: he began acquiring, from demolition sites as well as on the art market, every article of outstanding ironwork that he could find, with the exception of arms and armour, which others were already collecting.

Gentleman burglar.

The Clos Arsène Lupin, which opened to the public in Etretat in 1999, recounts the life and memory of Maurice Leblanc, creator of the famous Arsène Lupin.
The visit is divided into 7 stages to create an original, entertaining adventure in the footsteps of the most famous and most charming of burglars.

Over 5 centuries of the history of ceramics.

The museum is built around the core collection amassed by André Pottier (1799-1867), author of Histoire de la faïence de Rouen.
Established temporarily (1870) in a gallery in the cloister of the former convent of Sainte-Marie, already home to the Antiquities Museum of the Seine-Inférieure, the Ceramics Museum was officially opened on 15 August 1864.
The municipal collection of faïence remained here until February 1888, when it was transferred to the first floor of the new Musée des Beaux-Arts.
In the 1930s, there was talk of setting up a separate Ceramics Museum to offset the lack of space caused by the steady growth of the collections of both paintings and ceramics.

The Hôtel d'Hocqueville, built in 1657 and redecorated in the 18th century, was acquired for the purpose in 1936, but it took another half-century for the project to reach completion.
The collection was finally transferred to the new museum in 1984.

The collection currently contains some 6,000 exhibits, ranging from the simple ceramic tile to monumental busts, two thirds of which were made in Rouen, giving the museum monographic status.
The visitor is offered a full historic and aesthetic overview, beginning with the first production of faïence by Masséot Abaquesne in the mid 16th century, then the second wave which began with Edme Poterat in 1647, flourished in the following century and disappeared at the beginning of the 19th century.

In honour of the dada artist.

Seven educational exchange projects involving the permanent collections of the FRAME (French Regional & American Museum Exchange) museums, financed by the Annenberg foundation, were chosen for 2006.
The Musée des Beaux-Arts, in association with the Denver Art Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art, put forward a project based on Marcel Duchamp. To mark the occasion, a new permanent exhibition room features the works of Marcel Duchamp and theAndré Raffray cycle illustrating his life.
The visitor can settle comfortably to consult at leisure a range of visual and sound archives.
The collaboration between the three partner museums also culminated in a musical work commissioned from Paul D. Miller alias DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, an author and conceptual artist living in New York.

The Museum's new life.

An unusual journey in itself, Rouen Museum is a place where time seems to have stood still. Since it was first founded in 1828 by Rouen scientist Félix-Archimède Pouchet, it was managed until 1965 by only three curators, each of whom left his mark on the history of the museum. Encyclopaedic minds, each the disciple of his predecessor and each respecting the curatorship of his mentor, left the museum with an extraordinary sense of uniformity.
In addition to the museum's own acquisition policy, the collections have constantly been swelled by donations from scientists and also from navigators, returning from their distant expeditions with objects from all over the world.
By a natural process, the museum has thus become one of the last witnesses in France to what the museums of the early 20th century once were.

The story of a life.

The Pavilion retraces the life of Gustave Flaubert: the room where he was born, his souvenirs, ceramics, pharmaceutical products, surgical instruments, documents on childbirth (an 18th century anatomical figure illustrating the process of delivery), hospital furniture, statues of saints known for their healing powers. The medicinal herb garden is also fascinating.

The Savage side of mother nature.

"Nature through the eyes of some of the greatest photographers." The Natural History Museum in Rouen is living up to its reputation and is organising this unique exhibition, a stunning display of sensitivity and graphic beauty.

These 110 photos were selected through a rigorous process, revealing an aspect of our planet rarely seen in museums: the wild, savage, untamed face of Mother Nature.

Got your hiking boots on?

July 20th 2008, in Bacqueville-en-Caux - hikers should be ready for this exceptional sport event. For this 5th edition, participants will be hiking along two 10-kilometre circuits throughout the region.

You can sign up for this event in the tourism offices in Quiberville, Saâne and Vienne.