Getting there
You can take a train from St Lazare in Paris to Le Havre on the coast in just over 2 hours. It’s then not much of a walk from the station to the centre of town.
Le Havre is in fact a large city (the second largest port in France after Marseille), but we are interested in the historic town centre which is all walkable:
The special thing about Le Havre
Le Havre is a town on the Normandy coastline, located on the northern bank of the mouth of the Seine. Further along the coast we have Etretat and Fécamp, while Honfleur and Deauville lie on the southern side. But Le Havre is not your typical seaside town, for one thing really marks it out…. – its architecture! The story is that Le Havre was heavily bombed during World War Two, and the historic town centre was entirely destroyed. Architect Auguste Perret, who had already made a name for himself with the “Théâtre des Champs-Elysées” in Paris, was put in charge of the reconstruction of the town in the ‘50s. His style is an interesting one – utilitarian, simple, relying on modern cheap materials (mainly concrete) and prefabricated units. But he was still clearly influenced by the classical architecture of Paris with its tall thin windows, as opposed to the wide horizontal spaces of Le Corbusier.
Fifty shades of concrete
Concrete – a mix of cement, water and stones or gravel – is perhaps not the most promising of materials. But it can be treated in a number of ways, from chiseling to polishing and washing, in order to render various artistic effects, and Perret made the most of this, including fashioning of the distinctive rose-coloured concrete we find all across town.
The aesthetic of Le Havre
Perret’s buildings all followed strict proportions – the distance between the pillars, for instance, was always precisely 6,24m. This lends a certain symmetry and elegance to the facades (just as the uniform Hausmann apartment buildings in Paris achieve a unified feel). This was part of a broader conception of town planning with its open spaces and straight tree-lined roads. One tends to think of post-war buildings and concrete rather negatively, but the overall impression of Le Havre’s historic centre is extremely pleasing.
Scenes
The Muma
The “Musée d’art moderne André Malraux” is a wonderful little art gallery next to the water. The ground floor is reserved for temporary exhibitions, while the first floor showcases the permanent collection. Apart from the monotonous paintings of a certain Eugène Boudin which takes up almost half of the floor, we find paintings by Monet, Renoir (as blurred as ever), Pissarro (almost pointillist), Sisley, Manet, Courbet, Corot, Matisse, Léger, Dufy and others. The gallery is on a human scale – not at all tiring or overwhelming, and when you’re finished you can then repair to the gallery café and enjoy the view over the harbour.
Guided tour of a Perret apartment
The “Maison du Patrimoine” located on Place Perret organises tours of the town including a mock-up of an apartment from the ‘50s. The well-to-do family who lived there must have owned expensive real estate before the war, and been compensated handsomely by the “dommage de guerre” to allow them to afford such agreeable living quarters – most apartments of the time wouldn’t have had such space or amenities.
Terrace life
