Alauna Roman Therms 

The imposing remains of the therms of the ancient antique city of Alauna, built in the 1st century of our era, show the importance Valognes had at the times of the Romans. The edifice was built in a symetric plan and had about ten rooms, including a steam room, a hot pool and a cold pool. The masonries were elevated at about a dozen metres and neatly built, associating small cubic stone block bases to brick layers.
Site enhanced in 2001

Notre-Dame d'Alleaume CHURCH

The name of the ancient d'Alleaume parish came from the ancient city of Alauna and was built on its very site. The primitive Roman church was revised and enlarged in the course of the centuries, in particular by adding lateral chapels in the 15th century and an elegant façade in the 18th century. It holds a retable in form of a hemicycle decorated with polychrome terracotta statues, showing a surprising baroc movement. A hundred-year-old yew tree guards the cemetery, which contains many burial places in a variety of architechture and decorum.

Saint-Malo Parish Church

The Saint-Malo parish church was mentioned for the first time in a charta of Duke Guillaume le Bâtard in the middle of the 11th century. The choir of the church as it is today was rebuilt during the 15th century and presents a slender shape articulated by strong buttresses, whose monumentality is strenghtened by a crypt forming the base. The inside of the sanctuary surprises with its spectacular terraced archivolts above the big arches, supporting a circulation galery at the level of the high windows. The restored parts contrast with the bald sobriety of the nave, which was fully rebuilt after the 1944 bombings. The architect Yves-Marie Froidevaux laid stress on a totally modern aspect, where light pillars from brut concrete support the vault, showing a large and luminous volume.

Grand-Quartier House

Regional cider museum
The "Grand-Quartier" House got its name from the royal barracks which it had hosted in the 18th century. Situated at the bank of the river, it was originally the home of a dyer craftsman. It is a remarkable example of a craftman's building of the end of the Middle Ages, which has conserved most of its inside arrangements. The scale of the edifice, with its spiral staircase, its high chimneys and its mullioned windows shows the economic prosperity of Valognes at the dawn of the Renaissance. The Grand-Quartier House today shelters the regional Cider Museum, the largest French collection of the "Normans' blond Gold".

Grand-Moulin Street

Grand-Moulin Street is lined by craftsmen's houses built from the 15th to the 17th century along the banks of the Merderet River. Most of its inhabitants made their living with leather works. The "Parcheminerie" (no. 21), which today holds the premises of the Country of Art and History, was specialized in producing mediums for official documents, which in former times were widely produced by the royal administrations established in Valognes. The house itself is a Renaissance era construction, with quadrangular street-oriented surrounding stairs. The "Grand Moulin" (no. 16), attested since the 12th century, keeps being linked to a complex water balancing and canalisation reservoir which supplied the necessary hydraulic energy that was needed for its functioning. The outbuilding still shows parts of tub and tanner barrels.

OLD Hôtel-Dieu

The Valognes general hospital was created in 1497. The founder, Jean Lenepveu "priest, bourgeois and inhabitant of Vallongnes" got the support of Jeanne de France, dame de Valognes, natural child of Louis XI. Up to 1687 when a new hospital was built, the foundation was placed under the tutelage of the order of the hospitallers of the Saint Spirit. After the Revolution the building became a military barrack building and then, not long before 1880, was attributed to a stallion stud farm. On the South side, the gothic chapel was located next to the building of the sick, connected by a lateral portal. The remains of the general hospital now host a leisure and cultural center.

Ancient royal Benedictine Abbey

Forced to flee Cherbourg because of the plague in 1626, the Benedictines were warmly welcomed in Valognes and received many donations. The construction of the church was started in 1635, and it was consecrated in 1648. Its front is adorned with an impressing multitude of bossages. The home of the abbess is a beautiful building with curved chaines and long horizontal lines. The other convent constructions are built around a cloister with an arcade gallery. Confiscated during the Revolution, the ancient Beneditice abbey now hosts the Valognes hospital since 1810.

Notre Dame de Protection Abbey

Notre Dame de Protection Abeye was originally built for a community of Capucine monks who had settled in Valognes in 1630. In 1789 this mendicant order fell into abeyance and the last mendicant friars went into exile to Jersey. The cloister was bought some time later by the Benedictines, who in their turn were forced to flee from their first monastry at the Revolution. Bombed at Liberation, the church was restored between 1955 and 1957 by architect Jacques Prioleau. The stained-glass windows were put up in 1957 by Léon Zack. The church also hosts a magnificent retable decorated with a painting by Laurent de la Hyre, one of the French master painters of the Grand Century.

Ancient Seminary - Henri Cornat Highschool

The Valognes Seminary, in former times one of Normandy's major institutes, was built from 1654 on the premises of the ancient manor of the bishops of Coutances. It was closed a short time later because of accusations of Jansenism towards its founder, the abbot of Luthumière, and changed into a junior high school before becoming a national high school in 1969. The construction shows classical elegance and is built around a large main court-yard that is accessed by a large portal crowned by a voluted pediment. The parc is surrounded by high walls and conserves venerable trees, paths lined with low walls, a strange sundial and an unusual bee's wall. 

Hôtel de Beaumont

Hôtel de Beaumont was built between 1767 and 1771 by architect Raphaël de Lozon, partially taking up an earlier construction. It owes its name to its benefactor Pierre-Guillaume Jallot, Earl of Beaumont. Towards the court, the façade spreads around a convex superposed two-floor outer court, ornamented with openworks and crowned with an emplazoned front. This luxurious shrine has a spectacular staircase with two parallel flights of stairs that join at the second floor into a single right ascent hanging over the void. The back façade, orned with a pediment sculptured in effigy of the Goddess Cybel opens to large French gardens.

Hôtel de Grandval-Caligny

The Hôtel was built for Adrien Morel de Courcy at the beginning of the 18th century around a court of honour accessible through a covered passage. The main dwelling in the back of the court opens as a back façade to an elegant French garden. It is connected to the part of the building situated towards the street by a baluster terrace orned by a false arcade gallery which gives it a most theatrical effect. In the second half of the 18th century, Anthénor-Louis Hue de Caligny added a lateral pavilion and stables to the Hotel. From 1871 to 1887 the apartments of the first floor were rented to the writer Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, where he wrote his book "Les Diaboliques".

Hôtel de Thieuville

Museum of Eau-de-Vie and Ancient Crafts
Hôtel de Thieuville stretches out lengthways between a large court of honour and the river Merderet, which runs alongside its back façade. This edifice of the 18th century, which includes the elements of a Renaissance residence, today hosts the abundant collections of the Museum of Eau-de-Vie and Ancient Crafts: stills, ancient costumes, ancient grocer's, cooperage, tannery and clog maker tools. The upper floor rooms still have their original wookworks.

Public Library

Created in 1715 by Julien de Laillier, abbot and parish priest of Valognes, the library had first been installed in the Seminary. Enriched during the Revolution by funds of the religious communities, it was brought in 1830 to today's buildings. The ancient rooms were annexed a short time ago. It conserves a reputed ancient fund. In the basement a stonecutter collection is exposed, incuding the famous altar stone with metric inscription of the ancient Merovingian abbey of the Ham, "the oldest literary document of Normandy" (7th century).

The Courthouse

The Courthouse of Valognes was built from 1834 on the site of the general hospital of the 18th century. It was completed on the West side by a prison, which was destroyed in 1944. Its neo-classic architecture, with a corinthien portico in the front, opening towards a large waiting hall with zenithal lighting was the work of architect H. Van Cleemputte.