Les Jardins d'Étretat

The Jardins d'Étretat sit at the top of the eastern cliff, just beyond the Notre-Dame chapel, and are the most surprising thing in town. Seven gardens by the Russian landscape designer Alexandre Grivko cover the cliff edge — clipped topiary in extraordinary geometric shapes, contemporary sculpture, and views straight down to the Channel.

The combination of the gardens and the cliffs is genuinely strange and beautiful — somewhere between a Surrealist film set and a sculpture park. Allow an hour and a half. Modest entry fee, less rewarding in winter when the topiary loses some of its drama, but always extraordinary if it is your sort of thing.

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The gardens were originally laid out by the actress Madame Thébault, a friend of Monet, in 1905 — she planted them with rare specimens from her travels. They were left to ruin after the First World War and lay overgrown for nearly a century before the Russian landscape architect Alexandre Grivko restored and reimagined them in 2017. The result is one of Europe's strangest contemporary gardens — a topiary fantasy of spirals, waves, and giant carved leaves above a 70-metre drop to the sea.

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