Founded by William the Conqueror

The city of Caen has some of the most important monuments from the era of the Dukes of Normandy, including the Abbaye-aux-Hommes (Men’s Abbey) and the Abbaye-aux-Dames (Women’s Abbey), the great Benedictine monasteries founded around the year 1066 by William the Conqueror and his wife Matilda, in reparation for the irregularity of their marriage which initially had been forbidden by the Pope.
William entrusted the Benedictine monk Lanfranc, builder of Bec Abbey, with the construction of the two abbeys. The abbey church of St. Stephen, although largely rebuilt during the Gothic period, is a remarkable example of Norman Romanesque architecture. It inspired a great number of English churches built after the Conquest in 1066. William is buried here.
After a series of disasters, the monks of Saint Maur took over the abbey in the late 17th century and decided to rebuild all of the abbey buildings. Spared by the bombings in 1944, because it was used as a refuge for the citizenry of Caen, the Abbaye-aux-Hommes became the City Hall in 1965. The architecture and interior decorations of the 18th-century buildings are not to be missed.