The President of the Region, Hervé Morin, presented this Friday at the University of Caen, Normandy’s ambitions for the millennium of the birth of William the Conqueror in 2027, in front of nearly 500 people. The event, the outlines of which remain to be defined, will be festive. Hervé Morin: “we had planned, at the beginning, to make it a regional event. We realized through our trips to Sicily, Ireland, the United Kingdom – and soon Italy – how Normandy was present in the history and consciousness of these countries. We then wanted to make it a European event with exchanges of collections, traveling exhibitions… We want to make it a popular meeting in Normandy and which would be a vector of economic development through a great tourist year.”
A call for projects launched in 2025
From a historical point of view, celebrating William in 2027 is obvious for Sophie Poiret, lecturer at the University of Caen and, among other things, a specialist in Norman law: “Guillaume the Conqueror is emblematic, first of all because that he is the first to reunite Normandy and England. Then because under his reign, there is a power of the Duchy of Normandy which was constituted at the legal level, at the economic level and which is part of European history. At this time, the Normans were not just conquerors who came to power thanks to their swords. Once they established themselves at the top of the state, they had only one goal: pacify, reign over different populations with different rights, different religions and that remains, even today, a tremendous success.”
Starting this year, a European summit will be organized in May at the Abbaye aux Dames in Caen with the participation of Sicilian, British, Irish and Channel Islands delegations, in order to work on the programming of the Millénaire Guillaume and build partnerships. in the fields of culture, artistic creation, education and higher education and tourism. A call for projects will also be launched in 2025 to Norman tourism, culture and sports stakeholders to create events linked to Guillaume’s millennium. Among the ideas already launched, the creation of a European cultural route called “the Norman road” which will connect sites across Europe and the creation of a contemporary textile work in the spirit of the Bayeux Tapestry. The Norman Pierre-Antoine Capton – whose involvement at the Stade Malherbe is known – CEO of the production company Mediawan, also announced the creation of a major documentary for French television on William the Conqueror.
This article is originally published on francebleu.fr
