Honfleur

Normandy is a huge masterpiece, and Honfleur is one of its most beautiful subjects. Our hotel, just 40 km from Honfleur, is the perfect place to spend a day discovering this picturesque port on the Côte Fleurie. Visit the Vieux Bassin, founded by Colbert, with its tall, narrow houses with wooden facades clad in slate, the Lieutenance, the church of Saint-Etienne, the salt storehouse, the Roncheville manor house and fishing and pleasure boats of all colours. The quays of the Vieux Bassin are full of art galleries, the most interesting of which feature paintings by the Saint-Siméon School and the painters of the Estuaire.

Just a stone's throw from the Vieux Bassin, other jewels await you: the greniers à sels (salt stores), former stone warehouses created in the 17th century to store salt, the church of Sainte-Catherine, one of the most remarkable in Normandy and the largest wooden church in France, with its bell tower separated by a small square. The bell tower was immortalised by, among others, Eugène Boudin, the precursor of Impressionism, who was born in Honfleur in 1824 into a seafaring family. It has to be said that the light in Honfleur offers every nuance of the palette every day. Boudin, Dubourg, Courbet, Monet, Jongkind... all the great "plein air" painters have succumbed to Honfleur at one time or another. The Auberge Saint-Siméon in the hills above the town was one of the places where they met and exchanged ideas.

Erik Satie, composer and pianist born in 1866, is another of Honfleur's most famous names. The Maisons Satie, which houses a museum paying tribute to him, offers an original scenographic and musical tour in a place where works by artists who worked with him, such as Cocteau, Derain, Erté, etc., are on display.