Caen was the original capital of Normandy during William (Guillaume in French) the Conqueror’s rule in the 11th century. William and his wife, Matilde, founded two monasteries in Caen, Abbaye-aux-Hommes for men and Abbaye-des-Dammes for women.

The Abbaye-aux-Hommes was dedicated to St Etienne, and the church that is part of the abbey bears his name. Abbaye-aux-Dammes was dedicated to St Trinity, and there is a beautiful church, La Trinite, on those abbey grounds. The abbeys are in two opposite corners of the city.

The Abbaye-aux-Hommes can be visited only with a guide. This abbey is now City Hall, and you are shown several rooms and the cloisters. Visits to the church of St Etienne are free, and you can visit the church without a guide.

To get to the abbey, you need to go through the church and exit through the door to the left of the choir. As you walk through the courtyard, you get to the City Hall, with a wonderfully maintained alley of flowers. The abbey and the church were seriously damaged during religious wars in the 16th century. Reconstruction was started in 1628. The rooms that are shown to the public are in the western wing, which is composed of a wedding chamber, sacristy, and reception room, all completed in 1726, with gorgeous wooden panels on the walls installed in 1769. In the reception room, there are medallions and emblems of Christ and the Virgin Mary wearing a bonnet. Each mirror is adorned by grapevine carvings. The king could only look in passing at himself in the mirror, since it was inappropriate to stare at yourself in mirror - Jesus and Virgin Mary are watching.

The staircase next door is unique in that the stone layout and pressure support each stone and there is nothing else to support it. It is made of the same limestone, as is the rest of the building, with ornate metalwork. You are also shown the large abbey cloisters with gardens, and part of abbey attached to the church has Romanesque embellishments. Also in the cloisters is an exhibit devoted to the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII showing pictures of the victims of WWII and of Caen after the war, with 75% of the city demolished and the abbey being almost the only untouched building standing. You see fascist acts, how people were tortured and killed, and pictures of victims of concentration camps Maudhausen and Buchenwald, and hope that Fascism and such a holocaust will never happen again.