On the whole Normandy has largely managed to hang on to its medieval identity through its heritage buildings and resisted the developer’s habit of turning the region into something less valuable. It would be fair to say that Normandy has a lot of architecture, that is say unavoidably interesting and impressive buildings with a foot firmly in the past.
As you would expect a lot of the grand architecture in the region is what is accepted as typical Norman dating back to its medieval heyday and found all over Western Europe in castles and religious buildings.
Dominican Abbey St-Pierre-sur Dives
The architecture we saw in Normandy itself is dominated by two types. The half-timbered Venacular (of the common man) and brick and stone Romanesque. Basically it’s the tale of the Three Little Pigs except there is no straw house, which after all is the point of tale.