A boat trip around the Audomarois marshes
Saint-Omer, city of art and history has a lovely market and a preserved heritage: cathedral, Jesuit chapel, castle mound, great houses… The HôtelSandelin, which houses the collections of the museum, is one of the finest examples of an XVIIIth Century mansion house. This is without doubt one of the most pleasant spots in the Pas-de-Calais. Situated in Saint-Omer, the Audomarois Marshes earned the UNESCO « Man and Biosphere » label in 2013. This area covers 3,700 hectares and stems from 13 centuries of work in altering the course of the River Aa, clearing and transforming a swamp into a marshland that can be cultivated and inhabited. Today, the marshes can be visited on Bacôves; small traditional wooden boats. La Maison du Marais visitor centre presents the natural environment of the marshes as well as guided boat tours. Rémy Colin, the last local boat maker, or « Faiseur de Bateau » proposes visits of his workshop as well as boat trips onboard his hand-made embarcations
Agincourt 1415, an updated history of the famous battle
Inaugurated in August 2019, the new « 1415 Agincourt » Centre is the guardian of a collective memory that stretches back to the XVth Century.
In June 2001, the «Historic Medieval Centre » was inaugurated and became a key site for remembrance and historic tourism in the region, allowing visitors to discover one of the only two remaining battlefields of the Hundred Years War in Hauts-de-France. The centre has benefitted from major transformations to its architecture and scenography that have resulted in entirely reimagined and extended displays focusing on daily life in the XVth Century, but also an extension to the exhibition space of nearly 250m². By connecting the present and the past, offering a modern day and living look at scientific understanding in the time of the Battle of Agincourt and the late Middle Ages, the scenography leads the visitor to explore a lost time in which life had the « smell of blood and roses »
Montreuil-sur-Mer
Montreuil-sur-Mer is just the type of little town that people love to explore when on holiday. This small fortified town surprises visitors with its diverse built heritage. The ramparts and the citadel, the mansion houses and the narrow-cobbled streets in the upper town, the medieval abbey church of Saint-Saulve, the pretty houses along the rue du Clape… Montreuil-sur-Mer is blessed with incomparable charm. In September 1837, Victor Hugo strolled along the ramparts of Montreuil-sur-Mer. A few years later, this town was to be the setting for the first part of his most famous novel, « Les Misérables ». Every July, the inhabitants don the costumes of the novel’s characters and put on a light and sound show in the heart of the citadel.
For several years, Montreuil-sur-Mer has forged a reputation for its culinary savoir-faire. Michelin star chefs and local producers have contributed to making this fortified town with just 1000 inhabitants one of the hotspots of French gastronomy.
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