Church of Saint-Valery and Marine Cemetery

Despite its name, the Marine Cemetery contains almost no sailors or fishermen. The dramatic cliffs made building a port impossible, so local residents were historically farmers and craftsmen rather than seafarers. The evocative name was popularized by French Academy members Jérôme and Jean Tharaud in their 1948 Le Figaro articles, drawing a poetic parallel to Paul Valéry's famous 1920 poem about a similar clifftop graveyard in Sète.

The church's interior columns feature remarkably unusual carvings that would surprise most visitors: alongside traditional religious motifs like Saint James shells and rosettes, you'll find depictions of mermaids and Native American chiefs. These unexpected figures commemorate the voyages of Dieppe sailors to Newfoundland during the Age of Exploration, when this Norman port was a major center of Atlantic trade.

During World War II, German forces painted the entire church in camouflage patterns to hide it from Allied bombers targeting the strategic Normandy coastline. Traces of this wartime paint were only fully removed during restoration work in the 1990s, revealing the original medieval stonework that had been hidden for nearly fifty years.