Arcachon

Arcachon was laid out in the 1860s by the Pereire brothers, railway financiers, and organised into four quarters named for the seasons: the Ville d'Hiver on the wooded hill behind, built for winter convalescents and filled with extravagant villas of carved timber and iron, and the Ville d'Ete on the front for summer bathing. The bay is a triangular basin almost closed off from the Atlantic, farmed for oysters for centuries, with wooden cabins and beds visible at low tide. Just south stands the Dune du Pilat, over a hundred metres high and still moving inland, the tallest sand dune in Europe.

History

Arcachon became a municipality of its own by an imperial decree of Napoleon III on 2 May 1857, the same year the railway from Bordeaux reached it; until then it was little more than a forest of pines, oaks and strawberry trees, without roads, with fewer than 400 people, mostly fishermen and peasants. As doctors began to recommend sea bathing, investors opened bathing establishments for the Bordeaux bourgeoisie, and the locals broke away from La Teste-de-Buch to found a new town. Its 19th-century villas gave their name to a style, the Arcachonnaise, and until 1950 tuberculosis patients came here for fresh-air cures (Wikipedia, Arcachon).

Highlights

• The Dune du Pilat - Europe's tallest sand dune, still advancing inland.
• The Ville d'Hiver - a hillside of ornate nineteenth-century villas.
• The oyster beds - farming structures exposed at low tide across the bay.
• The Ile aux Oiseaux - a bird island with two hut-on-stilts landmarks.

When to go

May to September for the bay and beaches; the dune is best early or late to avoid heat and crowds, and it is exhausting in midday sun. Oysters are sold year-round.

Before you go

The dune climb is hard work in loose sand and the stairway is only installed in season. Parking at the dune is charged and fills. August in Arcachon is very crowded.

Nearby

Cap Ferret is across the bay; Bordeaux lies east.

Key facts