Last modified: 2009-04-24 by ivan sache
Keywords: seine-maritime | havre (le) | lion (yellow) | salamander (yellow) | fleurs-de-lis: 2 (yellow) | crown (white) |
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![[Flag of Le Havre]](../images/f/fr-76-lh.gif)
Municipal flag of Le Havre - Image by Pascal Vagnat & Arnaud Leroy, 14 October 2003
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The municipality of Le Havre (183,900 inhabitantsin 2006; 4,695 ha) is located on the northern shore of the estuary of the river Seine.
In the ancient times, the most important town near the estuary
were the port of Harfleur and the abbey town of Montivilliers,
located on the edge of the Pays de
Caux.
After the port of Harfleur, sanded up, had to be abandoned, King Louis XI (1423-1483, King in 1461) ordered in 1478 the exploration of the estuary of the Seine. Louis XII (1462-1515, King
in 1498), commissioned Sieur de Chaillou with the same duty.
François I (1494-1547, King in 1515) needed a protected port
he would use in his struggle against England. Since he did not trust
too much the burghers of Rouen, he asked
Guillaume Gouffier de Bonnivet (c. 1488-1525), Great Admiral of
France, to build a new port in the lower valley of Seine. In February
1517, Bonnivet was granted full power to build le dit havre et
fortification au lieu de Grasse, au dit pays de Caux.
Bonnivet selected a desert, marshy and brackish area where the high
tide lasted two hours longer than in the neighborhood.
In 1518, the vessel Hermine entered the King's Basin along
with the flagship of the Royal Navy. The new port was named Le
Havre-de-Grâce. The French word havre, used now to
design a small protected port or a very peaceful area - not
necessarily a port -, comes from Middle Dutch havene, and is
probably cognate to German Hafen, Danish Havn etc. Le
Havre was for a while renamed Françoise-de-Grâce.
The port was achieved in 1523 and developed commerce with Morocco
and Brazil. The town progressively thrived with the creation of a
tax-free zone and a market. Its population was around 5,000 in 1540.
In 1541, the Italian architect Bellarmato organized the town
according to a check pattern. The borough Notre-Dame was reorganized
and the borough Saint-François was created near the port. New
town walls were built in 1551.
At the end of the 16th century, Le Havre was a very busy port,
involved in whaling and trade with Peru, Brazil and the West
Indies. Several Protestants were active in commerce, who left after
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes
by Louis XIV in 1685. In retaliation, England bombed Le Havre in 1694
and 1696.
The economic activity resumed in Le Havre in 1716-1717 and was mainly targeted to the West Indies. Until the French Revolution, the port of Le Havre was a main point of entrance of colonial products (cotton, coffee,
tobacco, tropical hardwood), which were reshipped all over Europe.
The port was also used for resupplying the American insurgents.
The Revolution and Empire wars stopped the port activity, which resumed after the lift of the Continental System in 1808. New basins were built and the town walls were destroyed to allow the growth of the town. New canals (canal du Havre and canal de Tancarville) were built to avoid the difficult navigation in the lower valley of Seine. Le Havre started its transatlantic career and received the nickname of porte océane. Technical progress made the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean ever quicker. In 1850, the sail and paddle ship Franklin linked Le Havre to New York in 15 days. In 1864, the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique, one of the legendary "French lines", launched the steamer Washington, which was succeeded by the famous Normandie, Íle-de-France, Liberté and France. The golden age of the "French lines" suddenly ended in the 1970s.
The development of international commerce caused the emergence of
a rich society of merchants and ship owners, who built big vacation
houses along the beach, north of the commerce port, and in the
neighbouring town of Sainte-Adresse. A
bathing station with expensive hotels was built. The neighbouring
villages of Sanvic and Bléville were incorporated to Le Havre,
and an upper town developed above the ancient lower town. The two
parts of the town were linked by a complex network of 89 stairs and a
funicular. Jules Siegfried, Mayor from 1878 to 1886, developed the
town and proposed in the French Parliament the law on the habitations à bon marché ("cheap houses"), which allowed the lower classes to be housed correctly.
The First World War ruined the sea resort, and most hotels and
rich houses were sold and destroyed. A few houses were kept, the most
famous of them being the Villa Maritime, built in 1890 by
architect Toutain for Mrs. Aldecoa, who sold it in 1896 to Dufayel,
the owner of the Nice havrais in Sainte-Adresse. The house has
an area of 1,200 sq. m and 42 windows, and includes a glasshouse and
two artificial grottos. Later owned by the writer
Armand Salacrou (1899-1989), the villa is now a restaurant.
The port and the lower town of Le Havre were completely destroyed
during the Second World War. In June 1940, the German Air Force
bombed the oil port and sunk the ship Niobé, killing
800 passengers and crew members. In September 1944, the battle of
Normandy was over and Paris was liberated, but the Germans still kept
Le Havre. A series of 146 bombings started on 2 September, killing
more than 4,000, destroying 9,935 buildings and damaging 9,710 other
ones. More than 80,000 were homeless. Before surrendering on 13
September, the Germans blew the port with dynamite. The architect
Auguste Perret (1874-1954), known as "the wizard of reinforced
concrete", rebuilt Le Havre following Bellarmato's original plan. The
new town was organized around the town hall, made of a long flat
building flanked by a tower, and the St. Joseph church, surmonted
by a 109-m high bell-tower. The Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer
(b. 1907, the designer of Brasilia)
built the Vulcano near the Commerce Basin. One of the only remains of
the ancient town is the cathedral Notre-Dame (1575-1630).
It took two years to clear the port, whose activity progressively
resumed. Le Havre is now the first commerce
port in France and the fifth in Europe.
The writer Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737-1814) was born in
Le Havre. His main book is the exotic idyll Paul et Virginie.
Raymond Queneau (1903-1976), also born in Le Havre, founded in 1960
the Oulipo as a branch of the Collège de
'Pataphysique; very diverse, his works include novels, some
of them taking place in Le Havre, mathematics, poems, linguistical
analyses, etc. President René Coty (1882-1962, president of
the 4th Republic, 1954-1959) was born and passed away in Le Havre.
The Swiss composer Arthur Honegger (1892-1955), member of the
Groupe des Six, was born in Le Havre.
Two painters from Le Havre, Raoul Dufy (1877-1958) and Othon Friesz (1879-1949) were among the founders of the Fauvist group. The name of Fauves (wildcats) was coined by an art critic in 1905 because of the
agressive modernism of their works. Eugène Boudin (1824-1898), born in Honfleur, on the other bank
of the Seine, spent most of his life in Le Havre. Boudin is
considered as a precursor of Impressionism. Most of his paintings are
shown in the Museum André-Malraux in Le Havre, including a
striking collection of studies of cows.
In 1874, Claude Monet showed a painting called Impression soleil levant. Attempted to be amusing, a critic derogatively called Monet and his friends Impressionnistes because he did not find Monet's impression impressive at all. Once famous, the Impressionist painters did not reject the name, which was later given to musicians such as Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, Roussel and Satie. Impression soleil levant was most probably painted in a small room in located in Le Havre near the Commerce Basin.
Sources:
Ivan Sache, 14 October 2003
The municipal flag of Le Havre is white with the greater municipal
coat of arms placed in the middle.
The flag is hoisted over or in front of municipal
buildings such as the municipal police station and the tourist
office. It does not seem to be hoisted over the town hall, which
bears the flags of the twenty-five members of the European Union on its
flat building and the French flag over its tower. Two rows of five
French flags each are also found on the big square in front of the
town hall.
Ivan Sache, 14 October 2003
The arms of Le Havre blazons as follows (blazon and history from
Brian Timms:
De gueules à la salamandre d'argent, couronnée
d'or sur un brasier du même; au chef d'azur chargé de
trois fleurs de lis d'or, et surchargé d'un franc-canton de
sable au lion d'or armé et lampassé de gueules
("Gules a salamander argent in flames crowned or a chief azure
three fleurs de lis or overall a canton sable a lion rampant or armed
and langued gules".)
The salamander is the personal emblem of King François I, the founder of the town. The kings of France had a personal device that
was supposed to reflect their personality and ambition. For instance,
Charles V used a winged deer and Louis XII a porcupine. The
salamander was said to be able to stay alive in flames - probably
because of its thick and always wet skin - and even to be able to
extinguish a fire.
The scroll below the shield bears François I's personal motto
Nutrisco et extinguo ("I stoke and extinguish"), another
reference to the alleged fireproofing ability of the salamander.
The decorations below the scroll are the Cross of the Legion
of Honour and the War Cross.
On a document dated 1532, the arms of Le Havre are shown as "Azure a salamander argent between three fleurs de lis or". In the 18th century, the fleurs de lis were moved to fesswise in chief.
The arms used in First Empire have the
fleurs de lis removed and a chiefadded, as D'azur à trois étoiles d'or surchargé d'un canton dextre d'un N couronné d'or, the "N" standing for Napoléon.
At the Restauration the fleurs de lis were reinstated, this time on a chief of France. After the First World War, the present canton with the arms of Belgium was added to honour the King of the Belgians, whose government stayed in the neighbouring town of Sainte-Adresse during the War.
The Armorial Général overrode the arms granted by François I and ascribed completely different arms to Le Havre, which were of course never used,D'azur à un navire d'or sur des ondes d'argent et amarré par un câble d'argent à une ancre d'or qui trempe dans les ondes.
Ivan Sache, 14 October 2003
sPromenade des Ports du Monde (Promenade of the Ports of the World) is the name given to the sidewalk of Boulevard Georges-Clémenceau, between the entrance of the commerce port and the beach and along the marina.
The Promenade is marked out with 25 national flags hoisted on tall
poles. Each pole bears a rectangular shield on which the names of the
country and port(s) are written. The ports are those which have
commercial relationships with the port of Le Havre.
Starting from the commerce port and walking down to the beach, the
succession of the flags is the following (I have retained the names
of the countries and ports as they are written on the shields):
Notes on the flags:
All the flags are of the same size and proportion (2:3).
*Spain: The yellow field is darker than the square part around the
coat of arms.
**Singapore: The red field is rather orange
Ivan Sache, 18 October 2003