Abbaye-aux-Hommes, Caen

The Abbaye-aux-Hommes, formally the Abbaye Saint-Étienne de Caen, stands in the western quarter of Caen and is one of the finest Romanesque churches in Normandy. Construction began in 1063 under the order of William the Conqueror as an act of penance imposed by Pope Nicholas II for his marriage to Matilda of Flanders, a union the Church deemed too close in kinship. The west façade, flanked by two towers that soar to 84 metres including the Gothic spires added in the 13th century, established a template of twin-tower ecclesiastical architecture that influenced church building across England and France for generations. The interior is characterised by a three-storey Romanesque elevation — tribune, triforium, and clerestory — covered by the first known example of a sexpartite ribbed vault, a transitional solution of the 1130s that prefigured true Gothic construction. William the Conqueror died at Rouen in 1087 and his body was brought to Saint-Étienne for burial before the high altar. The tomb, marked by a simple marble slab in the choir, was desecrated during the Wars of Religion in 1562 when bones were scattered, and again during the French Revolution when the monument was destroyed; only a single thighbone now remains. The monastic buildings — cloister and conventional range — were rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries in a restrained classical style and survived the Bombing of Caen in July 1944 largely intact, having served as a civilian refuge sheltering several thousand people. The abbey buildings have housed the Hôtel de Ville of Caen since 1806. Free guided tours offered by the town hall on weekday mornings and Sunday afternoons give access to the choir, William's tomb, the crypt, and the Romanesque nave.