ITSASONDOAN: Cover                     BIARRITZ          AROUND THE FLAT                        Start Page
The flat it's 200 meters from the beach Côte des Basques, where the scriptwriter Peter Viertel (husband of Deborah Kerr) had inaugurated in 1956 championships of Surf, being the one of Europe's few places visited by The Beach Boys, in his last tour.
Today their waves are still especially appreciated,
being an activity very practised during the whole year.
It's called Coast of the Basques because the Basques of the countryside were going there to bathe every Sunday after The Assumption, -some decades ago-. It's easy to arrive by car from the old Port, continuing the coast. Here it can be contemplated the best sunsets of the whole Basque-French coast. Face its beauty, even, people who fills the park in summer, -here below- clap when it's finished.

Reputed since the XIXth century, Biarritz is a very small fishermen's village of whales, when Victor Hugo discovered
the village in 1843. He realised its charme but was inmediately concerned about its future as a seaside attraction:
I've never seen such a charming or more magnificent place...
There's just one thing that worries me: that it will become fashionable.
This village, so rustic, so rural, would then be overtaken by a taste for making money.
In wich case, Biarritz would no longer be Biarritz
Very soon, the prophecy of the Romantic poet came true, and the commune,
extended on the hill running along the coast, became the queen of beaches and the beach of kings
When the empress Eugénie decides to make her holidays coming here
for 2 months in 1854, and when Napoléon III had an E-shaped palace built for her,
the town takes all its splendor.
The Royals come from throughout Europe and made the town a success.
Biarritz has kept some characteristic buildings as an Orthodox Church with the dome painted blue, when the Russian aristocracy came here before the October revolution.

However, the Côte des Basques has surivived with its traditionnel charme.
Why this exception?
Because all the residences on the Côte des Basques are set back from the ocean.
It's In 500 meters from Hotel Radisson (4 *). Around there are parks (even with small lakes), restaurants & shops.
To the north, the center of the town,
in a few minutes walking quietly
on foot, going throug Abastos Market and
all kind of shops along Gambetta street .
There are Thalassotherapy centres 
(cures with sea water, mud baths & seaweed), near to the Hôtel du Palais,
as to 900m. from the Flat: THELMAR. Carrefour City is in 90 meters. In both sides, also Golf courses. The Museum of the Chocolate is at 100 m. from the apartment.
In face: bus stop [Labordette]
[behind, aquarelle of Michel Gournay]
 Suitable basic camp to know
the city more chic (with Donosti)
from the Basque Country.
In fact, it's called the small Paris, where Napoleón III constructed
the Hotel du Palais for his
beautiful wife Eugenia de Montijo;
Nabokov’s accommodation in his infancy being inspired there for Lolita.
Merimée found here its model reference to the personage of Carmen, after to know a local woman.
Bismarck knew here a lady with whom
he fell in love in a very special way...
In summer is breathed
a festive cosmopolitan environment .
Nice walks, on foot, by bicycle...
Down, poster by Garcia (around 1912); wide-angle on foot of the beach Côte des Basques, rounded photo, by Frank Larrahage. Photos Parc by ikuskerak.  Graphisme: Sophie Marty
Biarritz: La côte des basques, Huile sur Toile de lin, 2013, by Eric BOURDON  
Behind, right: cliffs of the 'Côte Des Basques', in the past
Côte Des Basques,XIXéme Siècle
The "Côte des Basques", in the 19th century, in an oil of the epoch, by Godchaux.
Pastel about the beach, by Nicole Guion-Stamatakis, with the villa Beltza at bottom		 The Watercolor of André Grimard (1890) allowed to see the position & the
form of these wooden barracks, which were serving as baths cabins in the epoch.
FUTUR:
Didier Borotra, the Major of Biarritz,
said two major points:

The Côte des Basques
is a beach and a siting,

 wich must to be shared between all the users:
surfeurs, baigneurs, promeneurs...
Furthermore, the siting's vocation is
to become pedestrian in the end

Allocution - 9 july 2009-
on the occasion of inauguration of
l'Etablissement de Bains
et de la statue en l'honneur des
Tontons Surfers