The best road cycling routes around Nielles-Lès-Ardres

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Magnificent articulated dragon that you can ride on

A very beautiful lighthouse located next to the town.

The Calais Lighthouse. The Calais Lighthouse has been in operation since 1848 and offers an exceptional panorama of the harbor and the Pas de Calais Strait. Overlooking the Courgain River, it features a classroom dedicated to maritime signaling.

Charles de Gaulle, the former president of the Republic and leader of Free France, had a special bond with Calais. This had a sentimental background, for Yvonne Vendroux, later Madame Charles de Gaulle (affectionately called "Aunt Yvonne" by the French), originally came from the port city in the Hauts-de-France region.

Construction of the Sacré-Coeur church began in 1867, and although it was not completed due to lack of funds, it was opened for worship in 1871. Work did not resume until 1877, finally being completed in 1892 with the addition of the bell tower.

In 1882, Father Debras was already thinking about building a sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Seeing the deplorable state of the district known as "Cailloux", he intended to echo the Marian devotion of Father G. Bellanger (1861-1902) within this somewhat isolated space, north of the city, while paying homage to the Patron Saint of soldiers. Having never seen the completion of his work, it was Father Debout who took over the work in 1906. The new parish therefore acquired a vicar, Father Peugnet, who launched the bulletin "Notre-Dame des Armées" and a subscription to raise funds to continue the work on the church. However, the 1914-1918 war forced him to delay the work. Subscriptions declined, partly due to the devaluation, but, as a parish bulletin mentions, the number of faithful praying "for the salvation of France, for the protection of their soldiers, to obtain the grace of courage and resignation" increased. After the war, with numerous appeals in the local press and the Voix de Notre-Dame, Father Peugnet relaunched a special subscription for donors of 500 francs: "the godfathers and godmothers of Notre-Dame." Postcards with the caption "Subscribe in memory of our soldiers" were published at each stage of construction. Indeed, from an estimated cost of 100,000 francs in 1914, the expenditure rose to over a million francs. On December 2, 1940, the Kommandantur requisitioned the Cailloux Church for a service in memory of 18 teenage members of the Hitler Youth, killed the previous morning by a bomb from a lone plane, while they were gathering at the end of Cosmorama Street (Rue Monseigneur Piedfort) waiting for trucks to transport them to the construction sites on the coast. After the German occupation, the church was returned to worship.

The construction of the Sainte Germaine church was a long project, fraught with pitfalls and uncertainties. It was born from the will of two men: Monsignor Lobbedey and Abbot Constant Hanse, who wanted to open a new place of worship in an outlying district of Calais, linked to the industrial activity of artificial silk. A subscription was launched in 1918 and the first stone was laid on July 29, 1928. It is the work of the architect Julien Barbier (1869-1940). Facing construction problems (marshy soil), its construction extended over a long period and was completed in 1986 with the construction of the belfry by the diocesan architect Mr. Twitchett and the Payeux company in Arras. Inside, the church presents vast open spaces evoking the inspiration of early Christian basilicas. Its interior is quite refined, yet presents a unified decor and a very consistent stained-glass program. These stained-glass windows, the work of Louis Barillet, Théo Hanssen, and Jacques Le Chevallier around 1934, are protected as historic monuments by decree of February 3, 1997. The movable objects (baptismal font, Stations of the Cross) are of fine quality and blend perfectly into the building. Listed as a historic monument, in its entirety, by decree of October 13, 2021.