Le Havre is a city in northern France, located at the mouth of the River Seine by the English Channel. The city and its port were founded in 1517-1518 by King François I as a naval port. Le Havre grew rapidly, not least due to the shipyard, which was established in 1524, and a fishing fleet emerged. Le Havre’s cathedral was built from 1536, and in 1541 the Italian Girolama Bellarmato laid out a modern town plan with a rectangular ground plan and bastions.

Later in the century England briefly established themselves here and they built Fort Warwick. Le Havre’s great prosperity continued the following centuries as a growing city, significant international trade and industrialization. During World War II, most of Le Havre was destroyed by Allied bombings, which meant that the city was rebuilt in modern architecture after the war. Today, you can enjoy an interesting city center with mainly architecture and structures from 1945-1964 according to a town plan designed by the architect Auguste Perret. Around 60 architects created Le Havre’s wide boulevards and concrete architecture, which provides an exciting contrast to many other French cities.

In 2005, the city center was included on UNESCO’s list of world cultural heritage as an exceptional post-war city following the 1900’s contemporary principles of urban planning and use of prefabricated elements in the buildings. And it is easy to get a good impression of Le Havre through a stroll in the city center by the water and with the Bassin du Commerce and Rue de Paris as central elements.

You can start a walk through Le Havre at the monumental square, Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, where Auguste Perret’s grand town hall building enthrones to the north. Centered around a symmetrical structure around the square, the town hall is 143 meters wide with the characteristic town hall tower at 70 meters in height. From Place de l’Hôtel de Ville there is a beautiful view down Rue de Paris, and in the same direction you come to Le Volcan, which like a modern volcano stands in the middle of Le Havre by one of the city’s harbor basins. Le Volcan was built 1972-1982 according to the design of Brazilian Oscar Niemeyer, and it functions as a cultural center. Architecturally, Niemeyer’s round buildings stand as a counterbalance to Perret’s rectangular buildings, and opposite Le Volcan you can see Le Havre’s World War I war memorial.

If you continue south along Rue de Paris, you will come to the city’s port and the work of art Catène de Conteneurs, which consists of colored shipping containers. The work was put up in 2017 to mark the port’s 500th anniversary. Close to this, on the harbor front, you can visit the Musée Malraux, which is a museum of modern art. In the city, one should also visit Auguste Perret’s modern church, Église Saint-Joseph, which was intended as a religious beacon in the city, and this is clearly seen in the design with the large tower.

The church interior is unique, and all the colored glass mosaics sparkle all the way up in the tower lantern above the imposing room. Between all the modern buildings, you can also see Le Havre’s cathedral, Cathédrale Notre-Dame, which was built 1575-1630 in a mixture of Renaissance and Baroque. The church, like the rest of the city, was destroyed during the Second World War, but it was decided to rebuild the cathedral which was completed in 1974.