🇬🇧 Sword Beach — Closest to Caen, Where the Ferry Arrives
Sword Beach is the easternmost of the five landing beaches and the closest to Caen — the ferry terminal at Ouistreham sits directly at its eastern edge. At 07:25 on 6 June 1944, the British 3rd Infantry Division came ashore here, supported by French commandos under Commandant Philippe Kieffer (177 men, the only French unit to land on D-Day) and piped ashore by Lord Lovat’s personal bagpiper, Bill Millin. By the end of the day, 28,500 men had crossed Sword, with around 630 casualties — relatively light, though traffic congestion on the rising tide slowed the advance inland toward Caen.
Key sites: Le Grand Bunker (Musée du Mur de l’Atlantique) — a restored 17-metre German command bunker right by the ferry port, 6 levels, €8.50 adults, €6.50 children 6–12, free under 6 | Hermanville-sur-Mer War Cemetery — free, over 1,000 graves, mostly British | Today’s Sword Beach is a long, sandy, family-friendly stretch popular for walking and watersports, with little visible trace of 1944 beyond the memorial monuments along the seafront.
Combine with: Pegasus Bridge (9km inland, covered on its own page) and the Mémorial de Caen — both fit naturally into a Sword Beach half-day.
Sword Beach Guide →
🇨🇦 Juno Beach — The Canadian Landings
Juno Beach, centred on the small fishing port of Courseulles-sur-Mer with Bernières-sur-Mer and Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to its east, was assaulted by the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division at H-Hour 07:45 — delayed by sandbanks and reefs offshore. Despite heavy losses in the first wave, around 21,400 Canadian troops had landed by midnight, and elements reached the outskirts of Carpiquet airfield west of Caen — the deepest Allied penetration inland of any beach on D-Day.
Key sites: Juno Beach Centre — Canada’s official D-Day museum, modern and well-curated with personal soldier stories alongside the wider campaign, €8.50 adults, guided tours of the bunkers in front of the museum included | Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery — free, around 2,049 Canadian graves, a few kilometres inland | Original beach obstacles and bunkers are still visible in front of the Juno Beach Centre at low tide.
⚠️ 2026 note: Construction work on the West Quay of the Joinville Basin in Courseulles-sur-Mer’s departmental port runs from October 2025 to June 2026, which may delay access to the Juno Beach Centre — check junobeach.org before visiting.
Juno Beach Guide →
🇬🇧 Gold Beach — Arromanches & the Mulberry Harbour
Gold Beach, the middle of the five, was assaulted by the British 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division from 07:30. Naval gunfire and specialised armoured vehicles known as “Funnies” cleared mines and beach obstacles quickly, and by evening 24,970 men had landed, securing ground nearly to Bayeux. Days later, Arromanches became the site of one of the war’s great engineering achievements: a complete artificial harbour — Mulberry B, or “Port Winston” — towed across the Channel in prefabricated sections and assembled offshore. Its concrete caissons still stand in the surf today, visible at low tide.
Key sites: Arromanches 360 Circular Cinema — nine-screen panoramic film on the clifftops above the harbour remains, €7 adults, 19-minute film shown every 30 minutes | Musée du Débarquement (D-Day Museum) — the first museum built anywhere to commemorate the landings, right on the Arromanches seafront, scale models and original equipment | Longues-sur-Mer Battery — intact German coastal gun casemates a short drive west, free to visit, one of the only in-situ large-calibre Atlantic Wall batteries in Normandy | British Normandy Memorial, Ver-sur-Mer — free, opened in 2021, 22,540 names of servicemen under British command who died during the Battle of Normandy carved in stone above the beach.
Gold Beach Guide →
🇺🇸 Omaha Beach — The Hardest-Fought Sector of D-Day
Omaha was the most heavily defended of all five beaches, and the bloodiest. Steep bluffs, deep water obstacles and well-prepared German positions of the 352nd Infantry Division turned the landing by the US 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions into a desperate fight — roughly 2,400 American casualties were suffered here on D-Day alone, giving the beach its grim nickname, “Bloody Omaha”. Despite this, by day’s end nearly 40,000 men had landed and pushed inland through the towns of Vierville-sur-Mer, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer and Colleville-sur-Mer. Walking the beach today — flat sand below those same exposed bluffs — explains the human cost without needing a single word.
Key sites: Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer — free, 9,389 white headstones across 172 acres directly above the beach, look for the graves of brothers Preston and Robert Niland, who inspired Saving Private Ryan | Les Braves — a striking steel sculpture standing directly on Omaha Beach itself, unveiled for the 60th anniversary in 2004, one of the most photographed memorials in Normandy | Musée Mémorial d’Omaha Beach, Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer — €7.90 adults, €4.60 children 7–15, focused exhibition on the landing itself | Overlord Museum — over 10,000 items including 40+ original vehicles, tanks and guns, 500m from the cemetery.
Omaha Beach Guide →
🇺🇸 Utah Beach — The Westernmost Landing, Added at the Last Minute
Casualties
Lowest of the 5
Utah was a late addition to the invasion plan — General Eisenhower added it specifically to secure an early route to the deep-water port of Cherbourg on the Cotentin Peninsula. In the predawn darkness, paratroopers of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions dropped inland behind enemy lines, scattered widely by poor visibility but achieving their objectives regardless. On the beach itself, the 4th Infantry Division landed over a mile from its intended position due to strong currents — a navigational error that turned out to be fortunate, putting them ashore at a less heavily defended point. “We’ll start the war from here!” Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. is said to have declared. By nightfall, US forces had pushed four miles inland having suffered relatively few casualties — the lightest toll of any of the five beaches.
Key sites: Utah Beach D-Day Museum (Musée du Débarquement) — built on the exact landing spot, €9 adults, children 7–15 half price, under-7s free, optional 45-minute guided tour for +€2.50 | Sainte-Mère-Église — the nearby village famous for paratrooper John Steele, whose chute caught on the church spire; the Airborne Museum there is one of the best in the region.
Utah Beach Guide →
🪖 Pointe du Hoc — The Cliffs the Rangers Climbed Under Fire
Best for
Authentic terrain
Pointe du Hoc is a 30-metre clifftop position roughly equidistant between Omaha (7km east) and Utah (11km west), chosen by German engineers for a battery of long-range guns capable of shelling both beaches. Allied commanders judged the position so dangerous to the landings that, at 07:10 on D-Day, 225 men of the US 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled the sheer cliff face under fire using rope ladders and grappling hooks, fighting through to find the guns had already been moved inland — and going on to hold the position against counterattack for two days. Unlike the beaches, the headland here has barely changed since 1944: the cratered, bomb-pocked ground, shattered concrete casemates and observation bunkers remain exactly as the fighting left them, managed by the American Battle Monuments Commission.
Visiting: Free entry, managed by the same organisation as the American Cemetery. A visitor centre provides context before you walk the headland — allow at least an hour to properly take in the craters and bunkers. This is widely considered the single most evocative and unaltered D-Day site in Normandy precisely because nothing has been rebuilt or landscaped.
Pointe du Hoc Guide →
🕊️ The D-Day Cemeteries — Where Remembrance Is Most Powerful
Best for
Quiet reflection
More than any museum, the war cemeteries of Normandy convey the scale of what happened here. Each nation involved in the landings maintains its own — different in design, language and atmosphere, but united in the same precise, immaculately kept rows.
Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer — overlooking Omaha Beach, 9,389 graves across 172 acres, free, managed by the American Battle Monuments Commission, open daily except Christmas and New Year’s Day. Bayeux War Cemetery — the largest British and Commonwealth war cemetery in Normandy, free, over 4,000 graves, including German soldiers buried alongside Allied dead. La Cambe German War Cemetery — free, more than 21,000 German soldiers, a deliberately sombre design with dark headstones and a central tumulus, offering a perspective rarely included on standard D-Day itineraries. Bény-sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery — free, around 2,049 Canadian graves near Juno Beach. Ryes War Cemetery — free, close to Arromanches and Gold Beach, around 650 Commonwealth graves alongside roughly 330 German graves, among the first cemeteries established after D-Day. Ranville War Cemetery — free, near Pegasus Bridge, Normandy’s largest British cemetery after Bayeux.
Visiting respectfully: All sites are free, open daily, and welcome quiet visitors. Photography is permitted but should be respectful — these are working cemeteries, not attractions. Sitting or lying on the grass is not permitted at the American Cemetery; food and drink other than water are also restricted within the grounds.
D-Day Cemeteries Guide →