I visited Le Havre as a break on my 6.5-hour drive from Bayeux back home. My expectations for the city weren't high so I allowed only an hour or two, but it wasn't bad at all. I could drive up all the way to the Hotel de Ville, and parked in the street 50m from there. These streets were the first pleasant surprise: very wide, aligned with trees, with a tramway in the middle, and lots of parking spaces on either side. The pavement has separate tracks for pedestrians and cyclists. They were used by locals out for some Sunday morning exercise.

To see the city center I walked the main boulevards which are aligned as a triangle: Rue de Paris, Boulevard Francois 1er and Avenue Foch. The Rue de Paris starts in front of the Hotel de Ville, which is one of the main sights of the city. The street itself is a shopping street but has the characteristic beige low rise buildings that I would see throughout. On the right, you will pass the white cultural center that Niemeyer gave the city, on the left side lies the city's cathedral, one of the few surviving old buildings. The street ends at the seafront, where two tall towers designed by Lambert symbolize a gateway into the city. The area was/is used as a social housing project. I liked the architecture of it.

From there, the Boulevard Francois 1er starts and you walk towards the city's beacon: the church of St. Joseph. Its high tower can be seen from anywhere in the city center, and reputedly was built as a "spiritual lighthouse". Its interior is not what you would expect of a regular church, it's more like a meeting room with pink/purple stained glass windows (a bit similar to the Sanctuario Dom Bosco in Brasilia).

When walking around Le Havre, that other modernist city Brasilia frequently springs to mind. I visited Brazil's capital in 2004 and must say that was a totally different experience. Its city plan and buildings are much more extreme, their design made for effect. It did not seem a liveable city at all. Although some of the reviewers below comment on the dreariness of Le Havre, I found Le Havre much softer in its approach and more gentle to its inhabitants.