The most interesting and characteristic buildings in Caen, its historical monuments in fact, are the two royal abbeys of William the Conqueror—­St. Etienne, called the ‘Abbaye aux Hommes,’ and la Ste. Trinite, the ’Abbaye aux Dames’—­both founded and built in the eleventh century; the first (containing the tomb of the Conqueror) with two plain, massive towers, with spires; and an interior remarkable for its strength and solidity—­’a perfect example of Norman Romanesque;’ adorned, it must be added, with twenty-four nineteenth-century chandeliers with glass lustres suspended by cords from the roof; and with gas brackets of a Birmingham pattern.

The massive grandeur, and the ‘newness,’ if we may use the word, of the interior of St. Etienne, are its most remarkable features; the plain marble slab in the chancel, marking the spot where William the Conqueror was buried and disinterred (with the three mats placed in front of it for prayer), is shewn with much ceremony by the custodian of the place.

The Abbaye aux Dames is built on high ground at the opposite side of the town, and is surrounded by conventual buildings of modern date.  It resembles the Abbaye aux Hommes in point of style, but the carving is more elaborate, and the transepts are much grander in design; the beautiful key-pattern borders, and the grotesque carving on the capitals of some of the pillars, strike the eye at once; but what is most remarkable is the extraordinary care with which the building has been restored, and the whole interior so scraped and chiselled afresh that it has the appearance of a building of to-day.  The eastern end and the chancel are partitioned off for the use of the nuns attached to the Hotel Dieu; the sister who conducts us round this part of the building raises a curtain, softly stretched across the chancel-screen, and shews us twenty or thirty of them at prayers.

We can see the hospital wards in the cloisters, and, if we desire it, ascend the eastern tower, and obtain a view over a vast extent of country, and of the town of Caen, set in the midst of gardens and green meadows, and the river, with boats and white sails, winding far away to the sea.

‘These two royal abbeys,’ writes Dawson Turner, ’which have fortunately escaped the storm of the Revolution, are still an ornament to the town, an honour to the sovereign who caused them to be erected, and to the artist who produced them.  Both edifices rose at the same time and from the same motive.  William the Conqueror, by his union with Matilda, had contracted a marriage proscribed by the decrees of consanguinity.  The clergy, and especially the Archbishop of Rouen, inveighed against the union; and the Pope issued an injunction, that the royal pair should erect two monasteries by way of penance, one for monks, the other for nuns; as well as that the Duke should found four hospices, each for 100 poor persons.  In obedience to this command, William founded the Church of St. Stephen, and Matilda, the Church of the Holy Trinity.