Visiting Normandy: Hours, Tickets and Getting Around
The thing nobody tells you about this coast is how little of it costs anything. Every landing beach is public sand, Pointe du Hoc and the Longues-sur-Mer battery are open ground, and the Normandy American Cemetery charges nothing to enter or to park. There are exactly four gates in the whole region that want a ticket. If you already know you want a guided day, Normandy guided tours list every one with its price and its meeting point.
What you pay for here, and what you don’t
Two figures, and they are separate. The first is admission, which applies at four places and nowhere else. The second is transport and guiding, which is what a tour fare buys — because the sectors are eighty kilometres apart and nothing links them except a road.
- Free, all of it: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword beaches; Pointe du Hoc; the Longues-sur-Mer battery; the Normandy American Cemetery and its visitor center, including the car park; the German cemetery at La Cambe; the church square at Sainte-Mère-Église; the seafront at Arromanches with the Mulberry caissons still in the bay.
- Ticketed: Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey, Monet’s house and gardens at Giverny, the Utah Beach Landing Museum, the Musée du Débarquement at Arromanches and the museums in Bayeux and Caen.
- A guided day: from $76 to $1006 depending on length, group size and whether the vehicle is yours alone.
Admission and hours, site by site
Every figure below was checked against the operating body’s own published information. Prices and hours move, so treat this as the state of play rather than a promise, and check the source before you travel.
| Where | Hours | Closed | Adult admission |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer | 9:00 am – 5:00 pm all year, last admission 4:30 pm | 25 December and 1 January | Free — and so is the car park |
| Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey | 9:00 am – 7:00 pm, 1 May – 31 August; 9:30 am – 6:00 pm, 1 September – 30 April. Last entry one hour before closing | 1 January, 1 May and 25 December | €16 (1 April – 30 September 2026), €13 (1 October 2026 – 31 March 2027) |
| Monet’s house and gardens, Giverny | 10:00 am – 6:00 pm daily, last admission 5:30 pm | Everything outside 1 April – 1 November 2026 | €13 adult, €7 aged 7–17 and students, free under 7 |
| Bayeux Tapestry Museum | Closed to the public since 1 September 2025 | Reopening planned for autumn 2027 | — |
| Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy, Bayeux | 9:30 am – 6:30 pm, 1 May – 30 September; 10:00 am – 12:30 pm and 2:00 – 6:00 pm the rest of the year. Last admission 45 minutes before closing | 24 December pm, 25 December, 31 December pm, 1 January, and 5–18 January 2026 | €8.50, or €14 with the art and history museum |
| Utah Beach Landing Museum | 9:30 am – 7:00 pm daily, May to September; 10:00 am – 6:00 pm daily, October to April | None published | €10 |
| Musée du Débarquement, Arromanches | 9:00 am – 7:00 pm, last entry 6:15 pm, audio guide included | 5–27 January 2026 | €12.90 |
Mont-Saint-Michel Abbey — €16 in summer, €13 in winter
The abbey is the one place on this coast where a ticket genuinely changes your day, because the queue for it in July is the difference between two hours on the island and four. Adult admission is €16 from 1 April to 30 September 2026 and €13 from 1 October. Under-18s with family and EU residents aged 18 to 25 go free, and so does everybody on the first Sunday of January, February, March, November and December.
Three of the departures here fold the ticket into the fare. If you are going independently, the free Passeur shuttle runs from 7:30 am to midnight and takes about twelve minutes; walking any of the three footpaths takes forty to fifty. The Mont-Saint-Michel page has the tides, the car park and the climb.
Monet’s garden closes for the winter
The Fondation Claude Monet at Giverny opens daily from 1 April to 1 November 2026, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm with last admission at 5:30 pm, and adult entry is €13. Outside that window there is nothing to visit, which quietly cancels a great deal of the one-day-from-Paris advice you will read elsewhere. Travellers who have been consistently give the same tip: go in the morning, before the coaches.
Ready to pick a departure?
Every guided day compared on what it covers, how long you actually spend at each stop, and whether an admission sits inside the fare or outside it.
How long you need in Normandy
- One day: the American sector — Omaha, Pointe du Hoc, the cemetery, and either Utah or Sainte-Mère-Église. That is a full nine hours and it is enough to understand what happened.
- Two days: add the British and Canadian sectors around Arromanches and Courseulles, or spend the second day at Mont-Saint-Michel.
- Three days: both of the above, without driving 130 kilometres twice in one day. This is the plan most people should make and almost nobody does.
When the coast is quiet
June is the anniversary month and it is the busiest by a distance, with road closures around the commemorations in the first week. July and August fill the abbey and Giverny rather than the beaches, which stay surprisingly empty. Late September and October are the sweet spot: long enough days, thinned coaches, and the abbey drops to its winter price on the first of the month. The weather page takes it month by month.
Booking, and how far ahead
Two to four weeks is comfortable from April to September, and the small-group days that cap at eight are the ones that go first. The first week of June books out months ahead. Read the refund window before you pay: most of these departures refund in full at twenty-four hours’ notice, one needs six days, and the rail-inclusive day from Paris cannot be refunded or changed at all, because your names go onto the train tickets.
Normandy Excursions lists every guided day with its price, its meeting point and its own refund window, so you can see which fares already cover an admission.