Normandy Tank Museum, Catz, France

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.

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Normandy Tank Museum

User Reviews

Mike Tupling (12 months ago)
Great museum, many very interesting exhibits. Every time I visit I find something new. The shop is excellent.

andrew kent (13 months ago)
Museum ok but you can ride in tanks nice aircraft as well

Charlotte Fernimen (18 months ago)
Quite a nice, self-guided museum. Enjoyed that you could go through it all at your own pace and spend more time on the things that really interest you.

Robert Fraser (2 years ago)
Great museum excellently laid out and extremely friendly staff. Highly recommend a few hours here if passing as conveniently just off the main road.

Debbie (2 years ago)
We just happened to spot it from the N13 when we were visiting another town, but well worth a slight detour on our return. The exhibition was well set up with lots of interesting, well written information about the American landing in the area. There are also shops, a bar and a pizzeria. I definitely recommend this place

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Broch of Gurness

The Broch of Gurness is an Iron Age broch village. Settlement here began sometime between 500 and 200 BC. At the centre of the settlement is a stone tower or broch, which once probably reached a height of around 10 metres. Its interior is divided into sections by upright slabs. The tower features two skins of drystone walls, with stone-floored galleries in between. These are accessed by steps. Stone ledges suggest that there was once an upper storey with a timber floor. The roof would have been thatched, surrounded by a wall walk linked by stairs to the ground floor. The broch features two hearths and a subterranean stone cistern with steps leading down into it. It is thought to have some religious significance, relating to an Iron Age cult of the underground.

The remains of the central tower are up to 3.6 metres high, and the stone walls are up to 4.1 metres thick. The tower was likely inhabited by the principal family or clan of the area but also served as a last resort for the village in case of an attack.

The broch continued to be inhabited while it began to collapse and the original structures were altered. The cistern was filled in and the interior was repartitioned. The ruin visible today reflects this secondary phase of the broch's use.

The site is surrounded by three ditches cut out of the rock with stone ramparts, encircling an area of around 45 metres diameter. The remains of numerous small stone dwellings with small yards and sheds can be found between the inner ditch and the tower. These were built after the tower, but were a part of the settlement's initial conception. A 'main street' connects the outer entrance to the broch. The settlement is the best-preserved of all broch villages.

Pieces of a Roman amphora dating to before 60 AD were found here, lending weight to the record that a 'King of Orkney' submitted to Emperor Claudius at Colchester in 43 AD.

At some point after 100 AD the broch was abandoned and the ditches filled in. It is thought that settlement at the broch continued into the 5th century AD, the period known as Pictish times. By that time the broch was not used anymore and some of its stones were reused to build smaller dwellings on top of the earlier buildings. Until about the 8th century, the site was just a single farmstead.

In the 9th century, a Norse woman was buried at the site in a stone-lined grave with two bronze brooches and a sickle and knife made from iron. Other finds suggest that Norse men were buried here too.

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Broch of Gurness

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