Vieux-Moulin, Vernon

The Vieux-Moulin of Vernon is a half-timbered house perched above the Seine on two stone piers of a vanished medieval bridge, and it has become the emblem of this Norman town. The bridge, traditionally attributed to Philip Augustus, was built in the twelfth century to link Vernon with Vernonnet on the right bank, resting midway on the Île du Talus. In about the sixteenth century a watermill was built astride two of its piers — a moulin à roue pendante, a Norman type whose wheel could be raised or lowered with the level and current of the river. It is the last survivor of several mills that once stood on the bridge.

The building is a two-storey timber-framed house with a steep roof, and it looks as if it floats: the timber frame sits directly over the water, on the piers of the old bridge. In front of it stands the arche orpheline, the "orphan arch", the last surviving arched span of the old bridge, and behind it the stumps of four more piers run towards the Île du Talus. The Château des Tourelles stands close by on the same bank. It is one of the rare houses built on a bridge that survive in France.

The mill lost its machinery in the nineteenth century. Between 1925 and 1930 it belonged to the composer and revue writer Jean Nouguès, who moored a barge beside it as a floating dance hall until it sank on 6 February 1927; he sold the house to an American, William Griffin, and after Griffin's death in 1947 the town restored it from the damage of the Second World War. In the summer of 1883, weeks after settling in nearby Giverny, Claude Monet painted Houses on the Old Bridge at Vernon, now in the New Orleans Museum of Art. The site has been protected since 1943, and in September 2025 the mill and the bridge remains were listed as historic monuments; their night illumination won first prize in the Lumières lighting competition in 2017.

Getting there

The mill stands on the right bank of the Seine at Vernon, in the Eure department, about 2 km from the centre of Vernon. Vernon–Giverny station, on the Paris–Rouen line, has regional trains to Paris Saint-Lazare and Rouen. The nearest airport is Beauvais-Tillé (BVA), about 60 km away. The mill is best seen from the riverbank.