Normandy know-how: Visit local industries

Normandy has many must-see sites: The Mont-Saint-Michel, the cliffs of Etretat, Claude Monet’s house and gardens in Giverny, the D-Day Landing Beaches, the Bayeux Tapestry, the list goes on! But have you ever considered visiting one of the hundreds of local industries that make our region so unique? Here is our selection of all the local industries you can visit.

Industrialisation came late to Normandy – partly because of the English blockades at the time of the Napoloeonic wars. Industry came with railways, weaving their way through the Seine valley and up to Cherbourg. This industrial development fascinated Monet and his contemporaries. Rouen and Le Havre became big industrial cities, aircraft were made at Caudebec-en-Caux and a major steel works of Baron von Thyssen opened in Caen in 1912. Many of these smokestack industries have now gone, but the Bohin Factory in the south of Normandy remains open to the public and is a story to give you pins and needles – founded in 1833, and still blessed with its 19th-century machinery – this is exactly what it makes! Are you ready to explore Normandy in a different way?