Biarritz: where the empress invented the Basque Coast

A whale-hunting village until the 19th century, Biarritz became a royal holiday destination thanks to Empress Eugenia, wife of Napoleon III, who made it her favourite beach.

The centre, made fashionable by Empress Eugenia in the 19th century, is easily explored on foot along the Basque coast.

The Grand Plage, the city's main beach, became famous through the regular presence of Empress Eugénie starting in the 1850s.

A short walk away, the Rocher de la Vierge, a rock accessible via a walkway built by Napoleon III, houses a statue of the Virgin Mary with views of the open ocean.

Continuing along the coast, you observe the surfers who made Biarritz the cradle of European surfing from the 1950s onward.

As evening falls, the Museum of Surfing and the Ocean tells the story of this sport imported from the United States and embraced enthusiastically by the Basque city.

Surfing arrived in Biarritz in 1956 thanks to an American screenwriter visiting for film shoots, who introduced the surfboard to the astonished local inhabitants.

Empress Eugenia had a villa built in Biarritz that is today the Hôtel du Palais, one of the most luxurious hotels on the French Atlantic coast.