2 stops in walking order

Bridge

Pegasus Bridge, originally called the Bénouville Bridge after the neighbouring village, is a road crossing over the Caen Canal, between Caen and Ouistreham in Normandy. The original bridge, built in 1934, is now a war memorial and is the centrepiece of the Memorial Pegasus museum at nearby Ranville. It was replaced in 1994 by a modern design which, like the old one, is a bascule bridge. On 6 June 1944, during the Second World War, the bridge was, along with the nearby Ranville Bridge over the Orne River (another road crossing, later renamed Horsa Bridge), the objective of members of D Company, 2nd (Airborne) Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, a glider-borne force who were part of the 6th Airlanding Brigade of the 6th Airborne Division during Operation Tonga in the opening minutes of the Allied invasion of Normandy. Under the command of Major John Howard, D Company was to land close by the bridges in six Airspeed Horsa gliders and, in a coup-de-main operation, take both intact and hold them until relieved by the main British invasion forces. The successful capture of the bridges played an important role in limiting the effectiveness of a German counter-attack in the aftermath of the Normandy invasion, as did the attack on nearby Merville Gun Battery. Later in 1944, the Bénouville Bridge was renamed Pegasus Bridge in honour of the operation. The name is de

~20 min at this stop

Castle

The Château de Bénouville is a building in Bénouville, Normandy, near Caen (northern France). It was designed in 1769 by architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux and built in 1770-74 and 1776-80 at the request of Hyppolite-François Sanguin, marquis of Livry (1715–1789) and his marquise Thérèse Bonne Gillain de Bénouville, heiress of the property. The interior was under construction from 1778 to 1780 under the direction of Jean-François-Étienne Gilet, the architect of Caen. In 1792, it was purchased from the widowed marquise by a fermier général (tax collector) who was guillotined in 1794. His daughter inherited the property which remained in that family until 1927. It then became the property of the general council of Calvados which turned it into a maternity hospital (singer Gérard Lenorman was born there). In 1980, it was rehabilitated and restored, opening its doors to the public in 1990. This château is one of the best preserved works of Ledoux, making it a major monument of neoclassical architecture at the end of the eighteenth century.

~20 min at this stop