Hi Denise,

Wow… a really hard question because there are so many of them!

Your list is good, but it’ll depend on how long/packed your programme is, and what things you are interested in. For example if you want to see lots of military kit, try the Overlord Museum (near the American Cemetery). If you want to see more about the effect of war on combatants & civilians, then the Caen Memorial is good. So too is the the Juno Beach Centre, which concentrates on the Canadian citizen soldiers. The Bayeux museum (Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy) is good at looking at some of the less obvious aspects, such as the role of the war correspondents, the grave diggers, etc. And it is next to the largest Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in Normandy.

That may be your best way through this. To focus on museums where you can see other things at the same time. The most obvious example would be the D-Day Landing Museum at Arromanches (recently re-built and expanded). Park in the car parks on the clifftop overlooking the extraordinary remains of the Mulberry harbour, see all the memorials up there, and the Arromanches 360 degree cinema if you want, then walk down into the town and visit the D-Day Landing Museum.

D-Day Experience museum stands at an important road junction (Dead Man’s Corner) and is three experiences in one: the small Dead Man’s Corner museum which is set up as it was when the German Parachute Division was holding it, a cinema, and the Experience itself which tries to recreate a simulated US paratrooper’s experience. (It was a bit controversial when it was being developed a few years ago. Some veterans’ organisation felt it was ‘Disneyfying’ their service). Personally I think the large Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mere-Eglise does it better. There, visitors just walk through a C-47 transport aircraft while sound and flashes of light set the scene. The Airborne Museum is one of the key museums in Normandy, but, as a result, usually very busy!

I totally approve of the Utah Beach Museum. Lots to see inside and outside. And I’m very fond of the Normandy Victory Museum, but this may be the one to leave for your next visit. It’s a large museum with lots of interesting stuff… and a good place to stop for a bistro lunch!

Other outlying museums that probably won’t fit into your programme… at the east end, the Merville Battery museum. Not enough people visit this site which was designed to shell Sword Beach and Ouistreham. Nearby is the Famous Pegasus Bridge and its museum. And at the other end of the Seine Bay, the Cherbourg Liberation Museum with spectacular views over Cherbourg.

I was quickly looking up what I had said about a couple of these, and realised I hadn’t written them up for the blog, but for the book! I can’t not promote it, because everything you need is in it!

There are sooo many museums, and I can see you have visited a lot of them.
If you have to say 3-4 museums you need to see when your are there, which are they?

So far I have listed:
D day Experience museum
Normandie victory museum
Bauyerx museum
Caen Memorial

And now I also found Utah Museum.

What do you think?