The maritime station
It is rare to find places like Cherbourg’s Maritime Station, with so many stories to tell about people, travels and hope.
For decades, millions of men and women travelled through here, in the hope of finding their way to a better world. This station is above all, a concentration of all of those precious moments. And when we venture inside, we can undoubtedly feel this unique atmosphere.
As soon as this building was officially unveiled in 1933, the press from all over the world sung its praises. It was designed by architect René Levavasseur, and thanks to its remarkable Art Deco style, it was even worthy of being named the most beautiful maritime station in the world! But beyond its appearance, you should really try and picture the relentless swarms of people passing through here at arrival and departure times. Sometimes, there would have been up to four trains arriving from Paris at the same time, while two huge transatlantic ships would be boarding thousands of passengers from the dock, destined for the Americas.
Unfortunately a part of the station was destroyed by the Germans in 1944, but it was still used by Allied troops to board men and equipment, after the town had been liberated. Life then got back to normal: after the war, the Queen Mary and Queen Elisabeth both docked here one after the other, and their presence very quickly brought the station back to its former glory as a transatlantic station, before being replaced with more modern, but still as prestigious, stopovers, that still occur even today.
But the dreams don’t even stop there! This Maritime Station was classified a historic monument in 1989 and today houses La Cité de la Mer with an ancient nuclear-powered submarine, the Redoutable, the first of its kind in the world to be accessible to visitors!
