World War II sites in Normandy
Orglandes War Cemetery
Orglandes War Cemetery is a German World War II cemetery in Normandy, France. The 10,152 burials come from summer 1944, immediately following D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. The entrance is marked by a small house surmounted by a bell-tower. The cemetery consists of 28 rows of graves, each grave marked by a stone cross. Each cross details the name, date of birth and date of death of each of the six or more dead soldiers ...St. Desir-de-Lisieux War Cemetery
The British grave service buried 3697 German casualties on this tarrein in St. Desir-de-Lisieux and made it a German War Cemetery (Kriegsgräberstätte). It is known as one of the cemeteries where Germen casualties who were found nowadays can be buried.Normandy Tank Museum
Normandy Tank Museum presents a great collection of American military vehicles from the Second World War. It is located on the historic site of the airfield A10 built from June 15th till June 18th, 1944 by the 826th Battalion of Air Engineering, to receive the first devices P47 Thunderbolt, on June 19th during the day.Featured Historic Landmarks, Sites & Buildings
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Goseck Circle
The Goseck circle is a Neolithic circle structure. It may be the oldest and best known of the Circular Enclosures associated with the Central European Neolithic. It also may be one of the oldest Solar observatories in the world. It consists of a set of concentric ditches 75 metres across and two palisade rings containing gates in places aligned with sunrise and sunset on the solstice days.
Its construction is dated to c. 4900 BC, and it seems to have remained in use until 4600 BC. This corresponds to the transitional phase between the Neolithic Linear Pottery and Stroke-ornamented ware cultures. It is one of a larger group of so-called Circular Enclosures in the Elbe and Danube region, most of which show similar alignments.
Excavators also found the remains of what may have been ritual fires, animal and human bones, and a headless skeleton near the southeastern gate, that could be interpreted as traces of human sacrifice or specific burial ritual. There is no sign of fire or of other destruction, so why the site was abandoned is unknown. Later villagers built a defensive moat following the ditches of the old enclosure.
The Goseck ring is one of the best preserved and extensively investigated of the many similar structures built at around the same time. Traces of the original configuration reveal that the Goseck ring consisted of four concentric circles, a mound, a ditch, and two wooden palisades. The palisades had three sets of gates facing southeast, southwest, and north. At the winter solstice, observers at the center would have seen the sun rise and set through the southeast and southwest gates.
Archaeologists generally agree that Goseck circle was used for observation of the course of the Sun in the course of the solar year. Together with calendar calculations, it allowed coordinating an easily judged lunar calendar with the more demanding measurements of a solar calendar.