Situated in Normandy, between Rouen and Le Havre, close to the Seine, Lillebonne has the privilege of welcoming its visitors in a built environment still having buildings shaped by 2000 years of human activities... Ancient theater, medieval castle, Gothic church, Industrial Revolution Building, Contemporary Town Hall, Habitats with Varied Styles and Materials...
The topography of the site, blending hills, valleys, rivers and alluvial plain, has enabled the emergence, throughout history, of multiple poles of growth. Unceasingly open to the world since its foundation, the city flourished with imported and processed products; Tin in Antiquity, cotton in the nineteenth century, oil today. In Lillebonne, if we have been building for 2000 years, we have at the same time a long tradition of welcome and exchange.
Creation of the Romanes in the first century, Juliobona, the ancient Lillebonne, becoming a port on the Channel and provincial capital embellishes rich houses and sumptuous equipments, like the theater, thermal baths or fountains, The archaeologists continue to exhume and whose aspect they can now restore to us.
Ruined during the barbarian invasions, the city subsists and is reborn in the Middle Ages. It will then be endowed with one of the most powerful fortresses of William the Conqueror, further enlarged by Philip Augustus. Over the centuries, agricultural and manufacturing prosperity enabled the various parishes, which would make up the future modern city, to erect numerous buildings such as the Notre-Dame church, the Mesnil chapel or the Catillon manor.
Today, at the center of an international industrial center, the city continues to develop and enhance its built heritage.