🇫🇷 France · Southwest and the Alps
Biarritz is one of those towns where two worlds seem to live side by side. On one hand, the elegance of another era: the imposing Hôtel du Palais facing the sea (which was Empress Eugénie's summer palace), the grand villas, the blue-domed Russian Orthodox church and the casinos that made this Atlantic corner the fashionable resort of the European aristocracy. On the other, surfboards: Biarritz is the cradle of surfing in Europe, and its beaches fill with wetsuits, surf schools and a relaxed culture that gives it a young, easy-going air.
Everything happens beside the ocean. The Grande Plage opens right in the centre, watched over by the Hôtel du Palais and the casino; the Rocher de la Vierge, a rock crowned by a Virgin and joined to the coast by a walkway attributed to Gustave Eiffel's circle, offers one of the best sunsets in France; and the Côte des Basques, at the foot of the cliffs, is the legendary beach where in 1957 all of European surfing began. Add to that the small fishing harbours, the clifftop paths and a town centre made for unhurried walking.
This guide covers Biarritz with a practical, warm eye: what to see in town, where to surf or swim, how to use it as a base for discovering the French Basque Country (Bayonne, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Guéthary) and even crossing into Spain, and how to get around, eat well and enjoy the atmosphere. If you are after sea, good food, history and a touch of glamour without the overcrowding of other destinations, Biarritz is a safe bet.
For centuries Biarritz was a modest Basque fishing and whaling village: from its watchtowers people spotted whales in the Bay of Biscay, and its coat of arms still shows a whaling boat. Everything changed in the middle of the 19th century. The young Spanish aristocrat Eugénie de Montijo, who had spent summers there since childhood, married Emperor Napoleon III in 1853; in 1854 the couple had the Villa Eugénie built facing the sea (today the Hôtel du Palais), and the arrival of the imperial court turned the village into a luxury resort. After them came Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Alfonso XIII of Spain and much of the European nobility, and Biarritz lived its Belle Époque, with its casino opening in 1901 and the building of villas, hotels and the Russian Orthodox church. In 1957, the American screenwriter and novelist Peter Viertel introduced surfing at the Côte des Basques during the shooting of a film, and Biarritz became the European capital of the sport. That whole story, from the whaling harpoon to the surfboard, is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓From the Atlantic to the high mountains: the Aquitaine of Eleanor and of the English kings, the Bordeaux of wine and of the slave trade, the Basque Country of Biarritz and the Savoyard Alps, cradle of alpinism at Mont Blanc.
Read the history of Southwest and the Alps →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Before it was the chic resort of the European aristocracy, Biarritz smelled of the sea, of tar and of whale fat. For centuries it was a modest Basque fishing village, perched on cliffs open to the Bay of Biscay, whose life revolved around an activity as lucrative as it was brutal: whaling.
The Basques were among the first peoples in Europe to hunt whales systematically, as early as the Middle Ages. From the top of the coastal watchtowers, lookouts scanned the horizon for the spout of the right whales that came close to the Cantabrian coast in winter. When they spotted one, they lit signals and the boats rowed out from the cove of today's Port Vieux, the Old Port, to harpoon the animal and drag it ashore, where it was cut up and everything was used: the meat, the fat (rendered into oil) and the baleen. That risky economy brought Biarritz prosperity through much of the late Middle Ages, and it left a mark that still appears on the town's coat of arms, headed by a whaling boat.
As the centuries passed, the whales moved away from the coast and the hunt declined. Biarritz remained a small town of fishermen's and farmers' houses, with nothing to suggest the dazzling destiny awaiting it. At the beginning of the 19th century, outsiders began, tentatively, to arrive, drawn by its sea bathing, then considered healthy. But the great turn would come at the hands of a woman born in Granada, in Spain: Eugénie de Montijo.
María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox Portocarrero y Kirkpatrick, countess of Teba and better known as Eugénie de Montijo, was a Spanish aristocrat who as a child and a young woman had spent summers in Biarritz with her family and had fallen in love with that corner of the Atlantic. In 1853 she married Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, who a year earlier had proclaimed himself emperor of the French under the name Napoleon III. Overnight, the young Spanish woman became empress of France.
In 1854, Eugénie persuaded her husband to build a summer residence facing the sea in her beloved Biarritz. The emperor deliberately chose a spot close to the Spanish border, so that his wife would not miss her country so much. So the Villa Eugénie was born, a palace laid out in the shape of a capital 'E' raised on the dunes beside the Grande Plage. From then on, the French imperial court spent long summer seasons there, and with it came the ministers, the diplomats, the artists and the whole machinery of Second Empire power.
The effect was immediate and transformative. Where there had been a fishing village, grand villas, hotels, avenues and gardens began to appear to house those who followed the imperial couple. Eugénie also left her devout mark: in 1864 she had the Chapelle Impériale built, a small chapel in Romano-Byzantine and Hispano-Moorish style dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico. In barely a decade, Biarritz was becoming the most elegant resort on the French coast. The phrase that sums up that era says it all: 'and Eugénie created Biarritz'.
The French Second Empire fell in 1870, after defeat by Prussia, and Napoleon III and Eugénie left for exile. But the prestige they had given Biarritz far outlived them. The Villa Eugénie, sold after the fall of the Empire, was turned into a luxury hotel: the Hôtel du Palais, still today the town's most emblematic building and still operating as a palace hotel facing the Grande Plage.
In the following decades, Biarritz lived its golden age, the Belle Époque, turned into a meeting point for the royalty and elites of half of Europe. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom summered here, as did King Edward VII, and very particularly King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who made Biarritz one of his favourite places and drew much of the Spanish aristocracy with him. A large Russian colony also arrived, aristocrats and families from tsarist Russia, for whom the Orthodox church of Saint Alexander Nevsky was raised at the beginning of the 20th century, with its unmistakable blue dome and its icons brought from Saint Petersburg, following the Franco-Russian alliance of the time.
The town filled with lavish villas, grand hotels, teas and balls, and in 1901 its famous Casino Municipal opened, establishing Biarritz as one of the most influential leisure centres on the continent. Seafront promenades were built, the coast was tamed with works such as the walkway to the Rocher de la Vierge —whose construction is linked to the technical circle of the engineer Gustave Eiffel— and the small whaling village became, definitively, an international resort. The two world wars and the crises of the 20th century dimmed part of that aristocratic shine, but Biarritz was about to reinvent itself once again, thanks to a wooden board from California.
Biarritz's second great transformation did not come from an emperor but from a Hollywood screenwriter. In 1956 and 1957, the American writer and screenwriter Peter Viertel —married to the actress Deborah Kerr— was on the Basque coast working on the shooting of the film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel 'The Sun Also Rises'. Viertel, a fan of a sport still almost unknown in Europe, had had his surfboard shipped over from the United States, and he began going into the water at the Côte des Basques beach, at the foot of the Biarritz cliffs.
That unprecedented sight —a man gliding upright over the waves— fascinated the locals. An ingenious local, Georges Hennebutte, nicknamed 'Géo Trouvetout' for his skill with materials, repaired Viertel's board and became his friend; together they surfed their first Basque waves. The following year, Viertel came back with several more boards and introduced a group of young French people to the sport: as well as Hennebutte himself, figures such as Jacky Rott and Joël de Rosnay. Out of that pioneering crew came what would later be known, fondly, as the 'Tontons Surfeurs' (the 'surfing uncles').
So, at the Côte des Basques in Biarritz, European surfing was born. Within a few years the first clubs were founded, boards began to be made in the area and the Basque coast became the mecca of surfing on the continent. What had started as the eccentricity of an American screenwriter turned into a whole culture: surf schools, competitions, brands and a way of life that gave Biarritz a second youth, very different from its imperial glamour but just as distinctive.
The Biarritz of the 21st century is the sum of all its earlier lives. From the whaling village it keeps its harbours, its coves and its coat of arms with the whale; from the imperial era, the Hôtel du Palais, the Chapelle Impériale and the air of an elegant resort; from the Belle Époque, its villas, its Art Deco casino and the Russian church; and from 1957, its identity as the European capital of surfing, with beaches full of boards and a young, relaxed culture.
Today it is a town of just under 25.000 inhabitants that welcomes crowds of visitors every year, drawn by that uncommon mix of quiet luxury, sport, nature and Basque food. It hosts international surf competitions, a well-known Latin American film festival (the Festival Biarritz Amérique Latine), major big-wave events and an intense cultural life. Rugby, a deeply rooted sport in the French southwest, is also part of its identity.
Biarritz also works as the gateway to the French Basque Country (Iparralde), with Bayonne, Saint-Jean-de-Luz, Guéthary and the inland villages a step away, and with Spain on the other side of an almost invisible border. It is a place where you can have an old-style hot chocolate inherited from the Sephardic Jews of Bayonne for breakfast, spend the morning surfing on the beach where it all began, admire the Rocher de la Vierge at sunset from the very spot where Napoleon III dreamed, and dine on the catch of the day at a fishing harbour. Few towns manage to tell so many stories in so few kilometres of coast.