Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The houses of Quai Sainte-Catherine in Honfleur are a set of 40 houses dating from the 16th and 18th centuries, aligned along the Old Basin. These narrow houses, with three to seven floors (except house #2), are often covered with slates and some are built in corbellation. Their reflection in the water of the basin, created in 1681 by order of Colbert and enlarged under Louis XIV between 1720 and 1725, makes it a major tourist attraction. These houses, listed as historic monuments since 1933, now house restaurants and breweries on the ground floor.

The Old Basin, with an area of one hectare, was built to replace the old medieval grounding haven, too narrow. Its creation required the partial destruction of the walls of Honfleur. This port played a key role in the French slave trade in the 18th century, with 142 expeditions and 50,000 captives deported, serving notably as a rescue port in Le Havre between 1783 and 1791. The Saint Catherine wharf, bordering the west and south of the basin, is inseparable from the city's maritime and artistic history.

The site inspired many artists, including Gustave Courbet, Eugène Boudin, Claude Monet and Johan Jongkind, members of the "School of Honfleur", forerunners of Impressionism. The Neurdein brothers will also immortalize the wharf in photography. Nearby, the Saint-Étienne wharf houses the city hall (protected since 1989) and the Saint-Étienne church, which became the Marine Museum. The location, the only vestige of the old fortifications, dominates the Quarantaine wharf in the north, complementing this preserved historical landscape.

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