Hotels in Colleville-sur-Mer

Colleville-sur-Mer

Colleville-sur-Mer sits on the Calvados coast of Normandy, directly above Omaha Beach — the 6 June 1944 D-Day landing sector where U.S. forces suffered their heaviest casualties of Operation Overlord. The village gives its name to the Normandy American Cemetery, which opened in 1956 and holds 9,388 graves on 70 acres of bluff overlooking the English Channel. That cemetery, administered by the American Battle Monuments Commission, draws roughly one million visitors per year and anchors the entire western stretch of the D-Day historic sites corridor.

Most visitors arrive as part of a wider Normandy circuit: Utah Beach lies 45 km to the northwest, Bayeux — with its 11th-century tapestry — is 16 km inland. The Overlord Museum at Colleville itself displays original armored vehicles and equipment recovered from the landing zone. Travelers range from American veterans' families and school groups to European history tourists and military-heritage researchers. The surrounding bocage countryside and coastal cliffs also attract walkers following the GR 36 long-distance trail.

Accommodation in Colleville-sur-Mer itself is limited to a handful of small properties; the majority of hotels serving the area are based in Bayeux or along the D514 coast road toward Port-en-Bessin. The cemetery and beach memorial are open daily; the Visitor Center, renovated in 2007, provides archival search services for tracing individual soldiers.