Caen

Caen, city, capital of Calvados département, Normandy région, northwestern France, on the Orne River, 9 miles (14 km) from the English Channel, southwest of Le Havre.

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It first became important under the Norman dukes in the 10th and 11th centuries and was the capital of lower Normandy in the time of William the Conqueror. Captured by the English twice—in 1346 and in 1417—it was held by them until 1450. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) broke the prosperity of the city, which had become Protestant. During the French Revolution, it was a centre for the Girondist movement. Following the Allied Normandy Invasion in 1944, the Germans used Caen as the hinge of their resistance to the British–Canadian advance, and the city was two-thirds destroyed. It was reconstructed, with planned industrial zones between the Orne and the port canal. A green plain, the Prairie Saint-Gilles, faces the city’s southwest side, and public gardens were planted in the city centre. The university, founded in 1432 by Henry VI of England, was resited and reopened in 1957. The Caen Memorial (opened 1988) is a museum dedicated to both war and peace.

(Read Sir John Keegan’s Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)

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The churches of Saint-Étienne (the Abbaye-aux-Hommes) La Trinité (the Abbaye-aux-Dames) escaped war damage; both date from the 1060s and are fine specimens of Norman Romanesque. William the Conqueror’s tomb is in front of Saint-Étienne’s high altar, and the tomb of his wife, Matilda, stands in La Trinité’s choir. William’s remains were thrown out during the Revolution. Saint-Étienne has an austere facade bare of ornament. Its two towers, rising to 295 feet (90 m), are topped by 13th-century spires. The abbey buildings, redone in the 17th century, now house municipal offices. La Trinité’s Norman solidity is overburdened by later (especially 19th-century) restoration work. The nave serves as the parish church, the transept and choir as part of the city hospital (hôtel-dieu). Midway between these two churches is the highly decorated church of Saint-Pierre, its Gothic and French Renaissance beauties restored after wartime damage. On the Place Saint-Pierre stands the Hôtel Le Valois d’Escoville, a restored Renaissance mansion (1538). The house where the poet François de Malherbe was born (1555) is on the rue Saint-Pierre.

Caen’s importance as a port dates from the 19th-century construction of the ship canal (about 9 miles [14 km] long), which parallels the river and opens to the English Channel at Ouistreham. It serves largely to import coke and export steel. The city’s steel industry is fed by the iron ore mines of the Orne valley. The blast furnaces of Mondeville have been reconstructed, and the working population is housed in the new city of Hérouville. The industrial aspect of the city grew greatly with the location there of automobile, electrical appliance, and electronics plants. Situated in the centre of a fertile grain-growing region, within sight of the verdant bocage of Normandy, Caen is a major service centre for all of western Normandy. Pop. (1999) 113,987; (2020 est.) 107,250.