Caen: William the Conqueror's Castle, the Two Abbeys and the Mémorial

Required Activities

• Walk the full 850 m of the castle rampart round all 5.5 hectares, counting the eleven square towers Henry I added, then find the foundations of the keep he built about 1120 beside the north gate — a castle inside the castle — and go into the salle de l'Échiquier, the great hall where Henry II received the king of France in 1158 and again in 1173

• In the choir of the Abbaye aux Hommes, find the slab put up in the early 19th century over the place where William was buried in 1087, and read its Latin epitaph calling him the never-conquered duke of Normandy, king of England and founder of this house — then work out that the bones are gone: Protestants broke the marble mausoleum open in 1562 and scattered them, one bone was rescued, and that single bone went back into the church in 1642

• Stand over Matilda's black marble slab in the choir of the Trinité, buried here since 1083, and pick out from its Latin her father the count of Flanders, her mother Adela daughter of a king of France, and her husband — then remember that this church was dedicated on 18 June 1066, while the barons were in Caen planning the invasion of England, and that William and Matilda gave their five-year-old daughter Cécile to the nuns that day

• At the Mémorial, read the line cut over the main door — pain broke me, brotherhood raised me, out of my wound ran a river of liberty — then go down into General Richter's command bunker under the building, the post from which the 716th Infantry Division held this coast on 6 June, and find the room that counts the 20,000 Normans killed, a third of all French civilians who died in the war