In the early hours of June 6, paratroopers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division dropped from the night sky over this small Norman village — making it one of the first towns liberated on D-Day. One soldier, Private John Steele, landed with his parachute caught on the church steeple. He hung there for over two hours, playing dead to avoid capture, as the battle raged below him. Today a parachute dummy still hangs from the steeple — a permanent reminder of that night. The village square and its museum bring the story of the airborne landings to life in remarkable detail.

On the morning of June 6, 1944, U.S. Army Rangers were given what many considered a suicide mission: scale a 30-meter cliff face, under enemy fire, and destroy a German gun battery threatening both Omaha and Utah Beach. They made it. Today, Pointe du Hoc remains almost exactly as the Rangers left it. Shell craters scar the earth. Concrete bunkers sit split open by Allied bombardment. Gun emplacements still point toward the Channel. It is one of the most preserved D-Day sites in Normandy — and one of the most visceral.

Omaha was the bloodiest of the five D-Day landing beaches. American forces faced heavily fortified German positions on the bluffs above — and paid an enormous price. Today the beach is wide, quiet, and edged by dunes. Standing here, looking out to sea, it is almost impossible to reconcile the stillness with what took place. That contrast — between the peace of the place now and the violence of that morning — is what makes Omaha unlike anywhere else. Your driver will give you time to walk, reflect, and take in the scale of it.

Perched on the bluffs above Omaha Beach, the Normandy American Cemetery holds 9,387 graves — soldiers, sailors, and airmen who gave their lives in the liberation of Western Europe. The rows of white marble crosses and Stars of David stretch across 70 acres of manicured lawn, facing west toward America. The site includes a memorial chapel, a Wall of the Missing bearing 1,557 names, and an interactive museum telling the story of the Normandy Campaign. Few places in the world carry this kind of weight.