View of Saint-Lô

The two spires at the centre of this view no longer exist. They crowned the church of Notre-Dame at Saint-Lô, a Norman town built on a rock above the river Vire. Corot painted the town in 1833 from a golden slope of field across the valley. Below him the river runs past trees, a stone bridge crosses it, and the roofs climb toward the church under heavy grey cloud. On the night of 6 to 7 June 1944 American bombers struck Saint-Lô, and the fighting that followed in July left 90 to 95 percent of it destroyed. Samuel Beckett, who worked at the Irish Red Cross hospital there after the war, called it the capital of the ruins. At Notre-Dame the west front came down. The south tower still stands without its spire, and a blank wall of green schist now closes the nave.