Bayeux is a commune in the Calvados department. Bayeux is a sub-prefecture of Calvados. It is the seat of the arrondissement of Bayeux and of the canton of Bayeux. The River Aure flows through Bayeux, offering panoramic views from a number of locations. The Jardin botanique de Bayeux is a botanical garden dating from 1864.
Bayeux is a major tourist attraction, best known to British and French visitors for the Bayeux Tapestry, made to commemorate events in the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. According to the legend, the tapestry was made by Reine Mathilde, wife of William the Conqueror. In fact, it may have been designed and woven in England. It is displayed in a museum in the town centre. The large Norman-Romanesque and Gothic Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Bayeux, consecrated in 1077, was arguably the original home of the tapestry where William’s half-brother Odo of Bayeux (represented on the tapestry with a wooden club at the Battle of Hastings), would have had it displayed.
The area around Bayeux is called the Bessin, which was the bailiwick of the province Normandy until the French Revolution. During the Second World War, Bayeux was the first city of the Battle of Normandy to be liberated, and on 16 June 1944 General Charles de Gaulle made the first of two major speeches in Bayeux in which he made clear that France sided with the Allies. The buildings in Bayeux were virtually untouched during the Battle of Normandy, the German forces being fully involved in defending Caen from the Allies. The Bayeux Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery with its memorial includes the largest British cemetery dating from the Second World War in France. There are 4,648 graves, including 3,935 British and 466 Germans. Most of those buried there were killed in the invasion of Normandy.
The town of Bayeux is also the home of a memorial to all of the journalists who have lost their lives while reporting. The memorial was designed by Samuel Craquelin, who is a French architect. The memorial lists the names of 1,889 journalists killed between 1944 and 2007. The memorial was established in Bayeux because of its historic liberation on 7 June 1944.
