The town of Rouen is remarkable for the diversity and the richness of its urban fabric: one finds there houses belonging to times varied, since until the contemporary time.

Rouen is thus one of the most heterogeneous cities of France from the architectural point of view: heterogeneity of the times thus, but also of the materials (the sides of wood, stone, or concrete for the buildings of the rebuilding), of the forms or the colors. Contrary to certain traditional cities like Bordeaux or Nancy, Rouen incarnated the model of the romantic city besides, celebrated by Victor Hugo in a famous poem. This variety could have been put at evil by the important destruction of the Second world war, which involved the disappearance of the districts located between the Seine and the cathedral, among the most appreciated tourists pre-war period: roughly a quarter of the old city left thus in smoke. As a whole, the rebuilding however respects the characteristics of the old city and, without resorting to the pastiche, tries to propose a certain irregularity of the layouts and forms. It should besides be clearly distinguished from certain consecutive real estate projects to voluntary destruction during the years 60-70: it is the case of the turns of the face of the Seine, of the modern buildings which break the harmony of the street Eau of Robec on part of its layout and buildings grouped around the place of Gold Apple, behind the garden of the town hall.

Today the city preserves close to: 2000 houses with wood side of which a thousand were already restored. After the quasi-total destruction of the old center of Lisieux, the old city of Rouen remains thus the richest testimony of architecture with sides of wood in Normandy. Oldest, a hundred, are former to, some dating even from. They are recognizable with their structure in corbelling, thereafter prohibited because of its role supposed in the propagation of the fires: some good examples remain Rue of the Large-Clock or street Saint-Romain. Others are much more recent since one still builds houses with wood side with, and even with. One thus finds many houses of tanners going back to this period, and characterized by the presence of attics-étentes formerly open on the street, street Water-of-Robec. With other streets quite as remarkable, like the streets Damiette or Cauchoise, they belong today to the safeguarded sector, one of the first created in 1964 by the law Malraux, as well as Lyon or Sarlat.

This sector extends on 42 hectares, excluding the rebuilt zones but also the districts Saint-Vivien or Beauvoisine who, less restored and less attended by the tourists, however contain many old residences. It is that the old fortifications, demolished gradually from, included a surface four times higher than the current safeguarded sector. As in many towns of France, it is today possible to find the limits of the historical Rouen Old man, corresponding to the current layout of the boulevards which replaced the ramparts. It is inside these limits that one finds most of the houses and monuments registered or classified by the historic buildings: 227 on the whole, which places Rouen among the first towns of France in term of patrimonial richness.