Various landmarks and scenes from Le Havre, France, which is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Sent by Samra from Normandy, France.
Located on the English Channel in Normandy, the city of Le Havre was severely bombed during the Second World War. The destroyed area was rebuilt between 1945 and 1964 according to the plan of a team of architects and town planners headed by Auguste Perret. The site forms the administrative, commercial and cultural centre of Le Havre. Among the many reconstructed cities, Le Havre is exceptional for its unity and integrity, associating a reflection of the earlier pattern of the city and its extant historic structures with the new ideas of town planning and construction technology. It is an outstanding post-war example of urban planning and architecture, based on the unity of methodology and the use of prefabrication, the systematic utilization of a modular grid and the innovative exploitation of the potential of concrete.
The inscribed property, an urban area of 133 ha, represents a homogenous architectural and urban ensemble. It comprises large areas (principal axes, squares, buildings and significant groups of buildings of the École du Classicisme Structurel), but also the ordinary residential fabric (streets, passages, inner city blocks) created from 1945 to 1964 within the reconstruction framework. It integrates the île Saint-François (rebuilt at the same time by regional architects, not part of the Perret team), fragments of ancient urban fabric and isolated buildings spared from destruction (around which the grid of the city is reconstructed) and buildings constructed after 1964, the presence of which appears indissociable to the rebuilt fabric (notably the Maison de la Culture, the Résidence de France, the extension of the Town Hall) (read more).
