One reason visitors tend to dismiss Le Havre out of
hand is that it's easy - whether by train, bus or your own vehicle - to
get to and from the city without ever seeing its downtown area, giving
the impression that it's merely an endless industrial sprawl.The Perret-designed central Hôtel de Ville
is a logical first port of call, a low flat-roofed building that
stretches for over a hundred metres, topped by a seventeen-storey
concrete tower. Surrounded by pergola walkways, flower beds and flowing
water from an array of fountains, it's an attractive, lively place with
a high-tech feel, and is often the venue for imaginative civic-minded
exhibitions.
Perret's other major creation, clearly visible northwest of the town hall, is the church of St-Joseph
. Instead of the traditional elongated cross shape, the church is built
on a cross of which all four arms are equally short. From the outside
it's a plain mass of speckled concrete, the main doors thrown open to
hint at dark interior spaces within resembling an underground car park.
In fact, when you get inside it all makes sense: the altar is right in
the centre, with the hundred-metre bell tower rising directly above it.
Very simple patterns of stained glass, all around the church and right
the way up the tower, create a bright interplay of coloured light,
focusing on the altar.
Le Havre's boldest specimen of modern architecture is even newer - the cultural centre known as the Volcano
(or less reverentially as the "yoghurt pot"), standing at the end of
the Bassin du Commerce, and dominating the Espace Oscar Niemeyer. The
Volcano, designed by the Brazilian architect after which the espace
is named, is a slightly asymmetrical, smooth, gleaming white cone, cut
off abruptly just above the level of the surrounding buildings, so that
its curving planes are undisturbed by doors or windows; the entrance is
concealed beneath a white walkway in the open plaza below.
The Bassin du Commerce
, which stretches away from the complex, is of minimal commercial
significance. Kayaks and rowing boats can be rented to explore its
regular contours, and a couple of larger boats are moored permanently
to serve as clubs or restaurants - it's all disconcertingly quiet,
serving mainly as an appropriate stretch of water for the graceful
white footbridge of the Passarelle du Commerce to cross.
Overlooking the harbour entrance is the modern, recently renovated Musée Malraux
(Mon & Wed-Fri 11am-6pm, Sat & Sun 11am-7pm; €3.81), which
ranks among the best-designed art galleries in France, using natural
light to its full advantage to display an enjoyable assortment of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century French paintings. Its principal
highlights are over two hundred canvases by Eugène Boudin, including
greyish landscapes produced all along the Norman coastline, with views
of Trouville, Honfleur and Étretat, as well as an entire wall of
miniature cows and a lovely set of works by Raoul Dufy (1877-1953),
which make Le Havre seem positively radiant, whatever the weather
outside.
If you have the time to spare, you might like to see what old Le Havre looked like in the prewar days when Jean-Paul Sartre wrote La Nausée
here. He taught philosophy for five years during the 1930s in a local
school, and his almost transcendent disgust with the place cannot
obscure the fascination he felt in exploring the seedy dockside quarter
of St-François, in those spare moments when he wasn't visiting Simone
de Beauvoir in Rouen. Little survives of the city Sartre knew, but
pictures and bits gathered from the rubble are on display in one of the
very few buildings that escaped World War II intact, the Musée de l'Ancien Havre at 1 rue Jérôme-Bellarmato, just south of the Bassin du Commerce (Wed-Sun 10am-noon & 2-6pm; €1.52).
The once-great port of Harfleur is now no more than a suburb of Le Havre,
6km upstream from the centre. While no longer sufficiently distinctive
to be worth visiting, it earned an undying place in history as the
landing place of Henry V's English army in 1415, en route to victory at
Agincourt.
Laid under siege, Harfleur surrendered in late September, following a
final English onslaught spurred on - according to Shakespeare - by
Henry's cry of "Once more unto the breach, dear friends ?"
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