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Most ferry passengers head straight out of the port of LE HAVRE as quickly as the traffic will allow to escape a city that most guidebooks dismiss as dismal, disastrous and gargantuan. While it is not the most picturesque or tranquil place in Normandy, however, it is not the soulless urban sprawl the warnings suggest, even if the port - the second-largest in France after Marseille - does take up half the Seine estuary, extending way beyond the town. The city was originally built on the orders of François I in 1517 to replace the ancient ports of Harfleur and Honfleur, then silting up, and its name was soon changed from the mouth-challenging Franciscopolis to Le Havre - "The Harbour". It became the principal trading post of France's northern coast, prospering especially during the American War of Independence and thereafter, importing cotton, sugar and tobacco. In the years before the outbreak of war in 1939, it was the European home of the great luxury liners like the Normandie, Île de France and France .

Le Havre suffered heavier damage than any other port in Europe during World War II. Following its near-total destruction, it was rebuilt to the specifications of a single architect, Auguste Perret, between 1946 and 1964 - which makes it a rare entity, and one visibly circumscribed by constraints of time and money. The sheer sense of space can be exhilarating, as the showpiece monuments have a dramatic and winning self-confidence and the few surviving churches and other relics of the old city have been sensitively integrated into the whole. The skyline has been kept deliberately low, but the endless mundane residential blocks, which were thrown up as economically and swiftly as possible after the war, get dispiriting after a while. However, with the sea visible at the end of almost every street and open public space and expanses of water at every turn, even those visitors who ultimately fail to agree with Perret's famous dictum that "concrete is beautiful" should enjoy a stroll around his city