Tour audio Orbec : City discovery tour

In Orbec, stone, brick and wooden pieces mingle for the pleasure of the walkers and to recall the history, thus mixing the past and the present. At the bend of the streets and alleys, flowered in the beautiful days, and where snake up by small streams, this tour offers you to discover the houses with wooden pan typical of the Pays d'Auge, the mansions and the businesses that animate this Rue Grande, the main artery of the city of Orbec, with its particular physiognomy.

Orbec is a city of charm and tradition. Here is what the writer Philippe Delerm says: "Everywhere small cobbled streets, half-paved, call you and invite you to start a path of marauding that seems self-evident.All is curved, bent, tightened, interlaced. The back of the houses opens onto small courtyards where wisteria have bloomed again.

A bit of history. Orbec was built on the edge of the Orbiquet valley, the South Pays d'Auge river. Its name comes from two Vikings terms meaning "river of trout". The Dukes of Normandy favored its development. In 1030, Robert I gave this estate to his cousin Gilbert de Brionne, who made it a viscount in the 11th century.

In 1583, Orbec was elevated to the rank of Bailiwick: seat of the bailiff, officer of the king in charge of administrative and judicial functions. It was then that settled in the city, the nobility of dress, scholars and bourgeois.

Throughout the seventeenth century, they had built mansions and contributed to the religious revival of the Counter-Reformation by the restoration of the Hôtel-Dieu Saint-Rémy, the construction of the Capuchin Convent and the Priory of the canonesses of St. Augustine.

After the French Revolution, the city lost its court in favor of Lisieux. Since then, commercial and industrial activities have developed. Thanks to the Orbiquet, many mills were built since the Middle Ages: grain, tan, fuller and paper.

In the nineteenth century, it was the textile industry that implanted: spinning, weaving, laundry and ribbon, facilitated by the railroad Lisieux-Orbec (1873-1966). The architecture of brick was developed, it was developed the district of the City Hall.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the agri-food industry gave a new impetus to the local economy. The installation of the Lanquetot cheese factory is testimony to this. At the Liberation, about twenty houses were bombarded but the major heritage of Orbec was spared, leaving today to the city its charm of yesteryear.