Bunker of the old train station, Blockhouse museum in Honfleur, France
The Blockhaus de l'ancienne Gare Ferroviaire is a concrete bunker turned museum in Honfleur, attached to what was once the town's train station. The interior is divided into four main rooms, a memorial corridor, and a small screening room where a film featuring eyewitness accounts from the liberation of the area is shown.
The bunker was built during the Second World War to house German troops, and could shelter up to around 200 soldiers at a time. After the war it fell into disuse, until a local association took over the site and transformed it into a place of memory.
The blockhouse sits in the Carnot neighborhood, near the harbor, and is looked after by a local group called "Honfleur 1939-1945". Every year on May 8, the group takes part in a ceremony at the town war memorial, showing how closely this site is tied to the living memory of the community.
The museum is mainly open on weekends during the summer months, in the afternoons. Outside that period, groups of ten or more can arrange a visit by appointment at any time of year.
A narrow corridor inside the bunker pays tribute to bomb disposal divers from Cherbourg and to towns twinned with Honfleur, making it one of the more personal corners of the museum. One of the rooms also displays a fragment of a shell from the British battleship HMS Warspite, a rare physical trace of naval support during the liberation.
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