Normandy 1944
D-Day sites in Normandy
On 6 June 1944 Allied forces landed on five Normandy beaches, code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, while American and British airborne divisions dropped inland on either flank during the night.
Our free Normandy guide follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne, but it also covers the main D-Day sites along the coast: the landing beaches, Pointe du Hoc, the German coastal batteries, the museums and the war cemeteries. Here they all are, area by area.
Utah Beach & the drop zonesCarentan & the causewaysBayeux, Gold & JunoCaen, Sword & the British airborneOmaha Beach & Pointe du Hoc
Utah Beach & the drop zones
2nd Battalion 506th CP — Le Grand Chemin
Easy Company · allow 20 min
In this area Winters reached the battalion CP, was drawn into the leadership vacuum and received the mission that led to Brécourt. Interpretive reconstruction, not a marked footprint.
Airborne Museum, Sainte-Mère-Église
Museum · allow 2 h
Reconstruct what happened before any Easy man touched French soil: overloaded C-47s, darkness, flak, jump lights, static lines and landing alone. Aircraft, glider, uniforms and equipment make it physical.
Azeville Battery
Battery · German coastal artillery · allow 1 h
Four casemates linked by tunnels, painted to look like houses; fired on Utah and held out until 9 June.
Brécourt Manor battery area
Easy Company · allow 45 min
Winters led a small force against four gun positions: suppressive fire, movement by small groups, into the trench, guns taken in sequence.
Crisbecq (Marcouf) Battery
Battery · German coastal artillery · allow 1 h
Heavy 210 mm naval battery that dueled with the fleet off Utah and was not taken until 12 June. Shows the scale of gun the Brécourt battery was a small cousin of.
Easy Company / 506th Brécourt Memorial
Memorial · public viewpoint · allow 30 min
The practical public viewpoint for the Brécourt story. Orient toward the private battery area; the guns were believed to be firing toward Utah Beach.
La Fière Bridge & Causeway
82nd Airborne battlefield · allow 1 h
Not an Easy action but indispensable context: control of the Merderet crossings produced some of the fiercest airborne fighting of the invasion. The causeway shows how flooded lowlands turned a road into a bottleneck.
Landing/scatter area — Sticks 68–71 sector
Easy Company · allow 20 min
A dispersion lesson, not four exact landing sites. Men landed across a broad area and assembled in improvised groups; the company that fought on 6 June was not the one that boarded in England.
Landing/scatter area — Winters
Easy Company · allow 20 min
Winters's probable landing sector west of town, not a surveyed touchdown point. He came down separated from his company and without his weapon.
Lt. Thomas Meehan / Stick 66 C-47 Memorial
Memorial · Easy Company · allow 30 min
C-47 42-93095, carrying Lt. Meehan, 1st Sgt. Evans and 15 other Easy paratroopers, was hit by flak and crashed near Beuzeville-au-Plain. All five aircrew and 17 paratroopers were killed.
Ravenoville / Marmion Farm area
Easy Company · allow 30 min
Associated with a separated Easy group — Guth, Talbert, 'Smokey' Gordon and Tipper. Small groups formed from whoever was nearby, fought local actions and moved toward friendly objectives.
Richard D. Winters Leadership Monument
Memorial · allow 20 min
Winters stands for the junior officers who led on D-Day. Not a combat position, but its placement on the road to Utah makes it an effective pause before Brécourt.
Sainte-Marie-du-Mont
Town · 506th sector · allow 45 min
The heart of the 506th's D-Day sector, connecting the landings, the routes to Utah and the Brécourt action. From here the scattered story converges.
Sainte-Mère-Église
Town · 82nd / dispersion context · allow 45 min
Begin in the square before the museum. The church and compact street plan make this one of Normandy's strongest orientation points for the airborne landings.
Utah Beach Landing Museum
Museum · allow 1 h 45 min
The other half of the D-Day story: while the airborne secured exits inland, troops and vehicles came through a vulnerable beachhead. Landing craft, vehicles and a B-26 bomber.
Utah Beach
Beach · allow 45 min
Finish on the sand. The westernmost landing beach, whose success depended on forces inland. Easy's Normandy campaign also ended here — it embarked from this beach on 10–11 July.
Carentan & the causeways
Angoville-au-Plain church
allow 30 min
Easy's reserve sector 7–10 June. The church became an airborne aid station where two 101st medics, Wright and Moore, treated wounded of both sides; the bloodstained pews survive.
Bloody Gulch / Hill 30 sector
Easy Company · allow 45 min
On 13 June German forces counterattacked south-west of Carentan. The 506th held until armour arrived. For Easy a test of holding ground, not seizing it. The exact hedgerow line is disputed.
Carentan
Town · allow 1 h
The prize between the Utah and Omaha lodgements. Easy entered on the Route d'Auvers / Rue Holgate axis on 12 June and fought toward the railway, where Winters was wounded; the company was then billeted here in reserve 13–19 June.
Dead Man's Corner / D-Day Experience
Museum · allow 1 h 30 min
The historic crossroads and museum interpret the fighting round Saint-Côme-du-Mont and the approach to Carentan. Material from Meehan's crashed C-47 has been displayed here. Easy passed this corner on the evening of 11 June.
Douve / Dead Man's Corner sector
Terrain · allow 20 min
Waterways, marshes, bridges and raised roads dictated movement. Possession of a junction or causeway mattered far beyond its size on a map.
Musée Mémorial de Bloody Gulch
Museum, Méautis · allow 1 h 15 min
The fighting after Carentan — the 13 June counterattack Easy helped repel, told from the ground where it happened.
Normandy Victory Museum
Museum, Catz · allow 1 h 30 min
Hedgerow fighting and the daily life of soldiers and civilians — the world Easy lived in from 13 to 28 June.
Purple Heart Lane / Carentan causeway
101st context · allow 30 min
The causeway toward Carentan became notorious: troops advancing along it were exposed with no room to manoeuvre. Chiefly a 502nd PIR story, but it is the battlefield Easy moved into.
St-Côme-du-Mont
506th / 101st context · allow 30 min
The 101st pushed through here toward Carentan; the 506th took the village on 8 June while Easy was in reserve. Hedgerows and narrow roads fragmented movement.
Vierville (Cotentin)
allow 20 min
On 7 June Easy led the 2nd Battalion column here on point and met German paratroopers; the village was cleared with support from other 506th elements and armour.
Bayeux, Gold & Juno
Arromanches-les-Bains / Mulberry Harbour
Site · allow 1 h 30 min
The logistics story: Port Winston let men, vehicles and supplies flow into Normandy. Read it as a system — offshore Phoenix caissons → floating roadways → shore discharge.
Bayeux — Museum of the Battle of Normandy
Museum · allow 1 h 45 min
Widens the lens from 6 June to the whole campaign: bocage, attrition, breakout, collapse.
Bény-sur-Mer Canadian Cemetery
Cemetery · Reviers · allow 40 min
2,048 Canadian graves from Juno and the fighting for Caen.
British Normandy Memorial, Ver-sur-Mer
Memorial · allow 1 h
Brings British and Commonwealth sacrifice into the route, above Gold Beach — Overlord was a coalition operation.
Juno Beach Centre — Courseulles
Beach · Canadian 3rd Division · allow 1 h
The Canadians took the heaviest losses of the British beaches in the first hour, then advanced further inland than any other force on D-Day.
Longues-sur-Mer German Battery
Battlefield · allow 1 h 15 min
One of the best places to understand the Atlantic Wall as a working artillery system — original guns remain in their casemates.
Caen, Sword & the British airborne
Caen Memorial Museum
Museum · allow 3 h 30 min
The strategic frame: origins and course of the war, occupation, D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. Deliberately placed late, after four days of terrain.
D-Day Wings Museum
Museum, Bretteville-sur-Odon · allow 1 h 15 min
Aviation context — the aircraft and crews that carried the airborne divisions and covered the beaches.
Hillman fortress — Colleville-Montgomery
Strongpoint · Sword sector · allow 1 h
The German regimental HQ bunker complex that held up the Suffolks for most of D-Day and helped stop Sword's advance on Caen.
Merville Battery
Battlefield · British Airborne · allow 1 h 30 min
The 9th Parachute Battalion attacked this battery despite severe dispersal and lost equipment — the direct parallel to Brécourt. Preserved casemates let you read it from the defender's side.
Pegasus Bridge / Memorial Pegasus
Museum / site · British Airborne · allow 1 h
The glider capture of the Orne and canal bridges was one of D-Day's most precise opening actions — the opposite of the scattered American drop, with the same need to secure crossings and protect a flank.
Ranville War Cemetery
Cemetery · British 6th Airborne · allow 40 min
2,236 graves, mostly of the airborne division, beside the first village liberated by the British.
Sword Beach — Ouistreham
Beach · British 3rd Division & Commandos · allow 1 h
Lord Lovat's commandos landed here with a piper playing and marched to relieve Pegasus Bridge by early afternoon. The Grand Bunker — the German fire-control tower — is now a museum.
Omaha Beach & Pointe du Hoc
German Military Cemetery, La Cambe
Cemetery · allow 45 min
The day deliberately begins with the German dead — a stark contrast to the American cemetery later, broadening the tour from unit history to the human cost.
Normandy American Cemetery
Cemetery · allow 1 h 30 min
Colleville-sur-Mer turns the battlefield into individual loss; its position above Omaha makes geography and remembrance inseparable.
Omaha Beach — central sector
Beach · allow 40 min
A second Omaha stop keeps the beach from collapsing into one viewpoint: compare exits, bluffs and fields of fire across the frontage.
Omaha Beach — Dog Green / Vierville
Beach · allow 45 min
Among Omaha's most punishing sectors. Open sand, limited exits, commanding bluffs — the contrast with Utah explains why the two beachheads developed so differently.
Pointe du Hoc
Battlefield · allow 1 h 15 min
The Rangers' cliff assault was separate from Easy's, but the preserved craters, casemates and cliff edge make the pre-invasion bombardment legible. Same kind of threat as Brécourt, on a larger scale.
Questions
How many places are there to visit?
This page lists 44 places from the free Easy Company in Normandy guide, each with its story, what you can see today, how to visit and GPS directions.
How much time do I need?
Allowing the suggested time at each place adds up to about 43 hours on site, plus driving between them. Plan on about 9 days to see everything, or pick the places that matter most to you. The guide's tour planner puts any selection in driving order.
Do I need to book?
Most places can be visited without booking. 1 of them need booking or can only be seen on a guided visit; they are marked “Booking needed” below. For 16 places we checked opening times and prices on official websites in September 2026; open each place to see them. Opening times change, so check before you travel.
Can I visit every site?
Some places, especially open fields, are on private land: view them from the road or a public path. Cemeteries and memorials are places of remembrance first.
Is the guide free, and does it work without signal?
Yes. The Easy Company in Normandy guide is free and works on your phone with no signal once it has been opened, with maps, stories and a tour planner. There is nothing to install from an app store.
More trip ideas
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- Bastogne & Battle of the Bulge sites to visitBois Jacques foxholes, Foy, Bastogne
- Band of Brothers sites in Germany & AustriaLandsberg, Berchtesgaden, the Eagle's Nest
- Spanish Civil War sites in MadridCiudad Universitaria, Jarama, Brunete
- Battle of the Ebro & Catalonia sitesGandesa, Corbera, Barcelona shelters
All 44 sites in Normandy 1944 →
Easy Company in Normandy
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