Le Havre: Perret's Concrete City, the Lantern of Saint-Joseph and the Impressionists of the MuMa
Normandy, France
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250
XP
+100 France
= 350 total
1 day
Le Havre: Perret's Concrete City, the Lantern of Saint-Joseph and the Impressionists of the MuMa
250 + 100 XP
Bombed between 5 and 11 September 1944 — the most devastated large city in France, with 10,000 buildings destroyed and 80,000 people homeless — the centre of Le Havre was rebuilt in concrete to the plans of Auguste Perret's studio, and on 15 July 2005 UNESCO listed it as World Heritage. Perret designed the town hall and the church of Saint-Joseph, laying its first stone on 21 October 1951, but he died in February 1954 and Raymond Audigier finished it: the 107 m lantern tower, completed in October 1956, is at once a landmark visible tens of kilometres out to sea and a memorial to the dead, lit inside by Marguerite Huré's glass. Its square plan with the altar in the middle and the congregation around it anticipated the liturgy of Vatican II. By the harbour entrance, the MuMa, opened by André Malraux on 24 June 1961 as France's first Musée-Maison de la culture, holds with Rouen's museum the richest collection of Impressionist painting outside Paris.
Required Activities
1
of 5
Stand directly under the 107 m lantern at Saint-Joseph and follow Marguerite Huré's glass upward to see the colours change with height, then find the plaque put up on 6 September 2019 to the 3,000 people killed in the Allied bombing the church commemorates
2
of 5
In the MuMa, find the Boudin room — 224 painted sketches from his studio, given to the town in 1900 — then stand at the glass and compare the light coming off the Seine estuary with the light in the pictures behind you; the building was glazed on five faces for exactly that
3
of 5
Walk from the town hall down the rebuilt avenues and test Perret's rules against what is in front of you: no ornament anywhere, the post-beam-slab frame left visible, and concrete handled as a stone he said was finer and nobler than the natural kind
4
of 5
On the MuMa forecourt, walk round Le Signal — 22 m long, 7 m high and over 220 tonnes, commissioned in 1956 from Henri-Georges Adam — and find the view it frames out to sea, then look for Jean Prouvé's great door on the seaward side of the museum
5
of 5
Find Oscar Niemeyer's Volcan in the centre of Le Havre and judge its white curves against Perret's concrete grid all round it
Stand directly under the 107 m lantern at Saint-Joseph and follow Marguerite Huré's glass upward to see the colours change with height, then find the plaque put up on 6 September 2019 to the 3,000 people killed in the Allied bombing the church commemorates
In the MuMa, find the Boudin room — 224 painted sketches from his studio, given to the town in 1900 — then stand at the glass and compare the light coming off the Seine estuary with the light in the pictures behind you; the building was glazed on five faces for exactly that
Walk from the town hall down the rebuilt avenues and test Perret's rules against what is in front of you: no ornament anywhere, the post-beam-slab frame left visible, and concrete handled as a stone he said was finer and nobler than the natural kind
On the MuMa forecourt, walk round Le Signal — 22 m long, 7 m high and over 220 tonnes, commissioned in 1956 from Henri-Georges Adam — and find the view it frames out to sea, then look for Jean Prouvé's great door on the seaward side of the museum
Find Oscar Niemeyer's Volcan in the centre of Le Havre and judge its white curves against Perret's concrete grid all round it
Before you go
Saint-Joseph is a working parish church with more than 100,000 visitors a year; go outside service times, and go in daylight — the glass is the whole point and it dies at dusk.
The MuMa opens 11am to 6pm Tuesday to Friday and 11am to 7pm at weekends, and is shut every Monday and on 1 January, 1 May, 11 November and 25 December. It cannot show everything it owns: from 29 September to 1 November 2026 only the first floor is open while the ground-floor galleries are being changed over, so check what is hanging if a particular painter is your reason for going.
The rebuilt centre is a grid of long concrete avenues and is a long walk end to end; the tram runs through it if the weather turns.
Le Havre's seafront is exposed and the wind off the estuary is strong even in summer — this is not a sheltered promenade.
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Challenge Location
XP Breakdown
Challenge XP
250 XP
France country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
350 XP
Country bonus earned on completion of your first challenge in France.
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