The harbour town that invented Impressionism — where Eugène Boudin taught the young Claude Monet to paint light outdoors, the narrow slate-roofed townhouses lining the Vieux Bassin are the most photographed harbour in France, and the salt marshes of the Norman estuary begin at the quay
Honfleur (8,000) in Calvados is France's most celebrated fishing harbour — the Vieux Bassin (Old Harbour) is ringed by seven-storey slate-roofed townhouses that have been painted by Gustave Courbet, Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet, and the Barbizon painters since the 1850s, making this arguably the single harbour most responsible for the birth of Impressionism. Boudin maintained his studio here throughout his career; the Musée Eugène Boudin holds the world's largest collection of his work. The wooden church of Sainte-Catherine (15th–16th century), the largest timber church in France, was built by…
Honfleur was one of the most active ports in medieval and early modern France — Samuel de Champlain left from here in 1603 to found Quebec City (the first French settlement in Canada), and Norman navigators reached Brazil, Newfoundland, and the West African coast from this harbour during the 16th century. The town's prosperity came largely from the slave trade in the 17th–18th centuries, a history acknowledged at the Musée de la Marine. The 19th century brought a different kind of fame: from 1857, Eugène Boudin began inviting Parisian painters to work outdoors in Honfleur's particular Atlanti…