Caen Memorial - Caen - TravBuddy

The Caen Memorial is one of the best museums dedicated to Warld War 2. It design is full of intelligent details pushing you to contemplate and deeply appreciate the horrors of war more than just look at tanks and weapons like it happens in some other museums.

The excibition starts with a spiral descent called "the failure of peace" where on every step and excibit is presented that takes us one step closer to the beginning of World War 2.

Once downstairs there is one of the most complete expositions of items, photos, models and everything related to the war including the infamous Enigma coding machine. The museum also put particular emphasis on the situation in France and in Normandy in particular during the dark years of war. A few different films also form part of the excibition, one of them showing from two simultaneous viewpoints (allied and german) the assault on the nearby beaches during D-Day. It is an eye opening experience to see it after spending the day walking through the exact same places featured in the film.

The last part of the museum called "hope" is dedicated to the main historic events happening since the end of Warld War 2 and presenting moments like the end of the cold war, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Israel peace efforts, etc.

Overall, the museum is great and while it is not very large, it is the ideal ending of a day spend contemplaiting the heroism of the events that happened in Normandy as well as all over the world 60 years ago.