48 hours in Biarritz

Nouvelle-Aquitaine/2024

Biarritz, the jewel of the Basque coast, has seen many upheavals over the course of its history. Today, in the firmament of cool, gourmet destinations, it's worth recalling its rich foundations.

Does this merry band, riding up the Avenue de Frias on electric cargo bikes, longboards slung over their shoulders, have any idea that they're leaving behind one of Biarritz's most secret and charming spots - a hidden chapel, sheltered behind tall hedges of Chinese pittosporum, which in spring are covered in white flowers with a sweet, heady perfume, the Chapelle Impériale ; that this pale pink house, topped with a creamy chantilly cream that has seen better days, was the home of the King of the Belgians; that here, far to the left, stretched his park, a few trees of which may still be standing there, at the end of Avenue du Docteur-Claisse? Does she suspect, as she strolls down Avenue de Verdun - now a haunt for chic surfers who drink lattes and eat organic food - that it was once home to the city's most popular fishmonger (since replaced by a... clothing store)? Does she suspect that, before it was a bookshop, this British-style boutique was one of Gabrielle Chanel's very first? In short, does she suspect that, before becoming one of the hot spots for trendy, festive, sporty young people, surfers and golfers, Biarritz had a thousand and one lives, that it is a millefeuille of crossed destinies? It's long gone, but it's still everywhere. Eugénie, Empress of the French, launched the resort, transforming a modest fishing port into a theater of vanities. It was in her wake that all the courts of Europe flocked, even though France would soon turn its back on the Empire. It was here that the Russian aristocracy took refuge in 1917, and where the bourgeoisie of the Roaring Twenties settled. It was here, too, that the high society of the 1950s discovered both the ballets of the Marquis de Cuevas and those on the water of the madmen we now call the tontons surfeurs... Over the years, Biarritz's influence has given a new face to the Basque country, both on land and sea. The town became a veritable architectural laboratory, with its late-19th-century follies (Villa Belza), its mini-châteaux for the wealthy bourgeois of the Third Republic (Château Boulart), its neo-Norman houses (Villa Édouard VII), neo-Andalusian (villa Casablanca, once owned by Jean Patou), neo-Gothic (villa Javalquinto, now the tourist office), neo-Renaissance (château Gramont), neo-Basque (villa Etchepherdia), Art Deco manifestos... Biarritz has long been in the limelight, then in the shade. In the 1970s, and right up to the start of the new millennium, shutters were closed ten months out of the year; campsites replaced the parks of the great estates; the vans of surfing and smoking hippies replaced chauffeur-driven limousines; blocks of flats replaced the big hotels on the seafront; the big houses built for the big families were cut up... Biarritz then went out of fashion and made a series of risky, even calamitous choices. A few die-hards, however, remained under the spell of the uncertain climate, a coastline torn apart by a permanent swell, and the mountains that are so close to the sea. you can always see around the corner. A group of die-hards who are going to reinvent the city - joined by what these same die-hards, and the natives here, call the "neos". They began by eliminating the invisible borders with Anglet, then Bayonne on one side, Bidart and Guéthary on the other, and winking at the nearby hinterland, Arbonne, Arcangues... They imagined places where festivities were once again beautiful, without giving in to bling, where a new gastronomy was invented, where a new hospitality was imagined... Biarritz has once again become an epicenter. All you have to do is walk up Rue Gambetta to see for yourself, try to find a table in any season around the Halles and the market, try to catch the green ray from the Côte des Basques, attend a ballet (again) at the Le Temps d'Aimer festival, a screening at the Biarritz Amérique Latine festival or the brand-new Nouvelles Vagues festival, dine in one of these new-style inns overlooking the Rhune and the Trois Couronnes, have brunch near the Parc Mazon, pedal like this merry band on the bike path along the ocean... Surfing on all the codes of a cool and sporty attitude, Biarritz is proud and beautiful. S.B.