Arcachon, loop of the Ville d'Hiver

The Thiers pier

In 1899, James Veyrier Montagnères, then Mayor of Arcachon, decided to develop the seafront by building two additional jetties: "Jetée de la Chapelle" and "Nouvelle Jetty". This "Nouvelle Jetty", built in 1903, took its definitive name in 1907, the name of the adjacent square: Thiers. The pier and the square are thus named in honor of Adolphe Thiers, President of the French Republic from 1871 to 1873, who stayed as a "simple citizen" in Arcachon in 1875 at the Grand Hôtel. Used by the Germans during the occupation of Arcachon in 1940, the pier was destroyed by the occupiers on August 22, 1944, then rebuilt in 1946. Following a noted state of dilapidation, the pier was completely rebuilt in 2004 in a style combining tradition and modernism, chosen by the inhabitants. Today, the Thiers pier is still the main pier of the city.

The Grand Hotel

Built for the Compagnie du Midi by the architect Eugène Ormières and the engineer Paul Régnauld, the Grand Hôtel was inaugurated in the summer of 1866. The work took place between 1864 and 1865 on the seafront. It was owned by the Société immobilière d'Arcachon, then by Léon Lesca. In the continuity of the street leading to the Casino Mauresque, this building was intended for a worldly clientele. It had 300 rooms, a library, a winter garden, a restaurant, a billiard room and a bathing service. The Grand Hôtel welcomed personalities including the Empress of Austria Sissi and the Queen of Madagascar, Ranavalona III in exile. In 1906, the building was ravaged by fire and rebuilt in 1910. Requisitioned in 1914, it was transformed into a military hospital. Redeveloped into apartments between 1951 and 1956, the building was called Résidence Carnot.

The Moorish Park lift

To access the Parc Mauresque from the lower town and enjoy a beautiful view of the Basin, a funicular was built in 1912. Dilapidated, it was replaced by an elevator at the beginning of the summer of 1949. Its entrance is decorated with the ceramic bas-relief by Claude Bouscau, "Faun pursuing nymphs". Made in 1952, it represents the ancient theme of the faun and nymphs, very fashionable in the "Art Deco" era, treated here with truculence and with a great sense of movement. The scene takes place in a familiar landscape of pines and palm trees typical of Arcachon. Nearby, in the middle of the basin drawing a four-leaf clover, is another work by Claude Bouscau "Woman playing with a dolphin". This 1952 commission, sculpted in stone, presents a natural and sensual young woman whose hair follows the gesture of the marine mammal.

The Moorish Park

The park was created in 1863 by the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi on 4 hectares. It takes its name from the Moorish-inspired casino opened on the same date for the entertainment of the sick and vacationers. The park surrounding the casino, designed by landscape architects Frusique and Claverie, served as a green setting. Planted with rare species, it housed the Mozart pavilion, a refreshment bar and the San-Carlino theater reserved for children. Spread over four hectares, the park has been transformed into an arboretum since 1992. It has become a place for walking and relaxing in the city center. The casino was inaugurated on July 12, 1863. The architect is Paul Regnault, engineer of the Compagnie du Midi, associated with Jules Salesses. The Moorish casino owes its name to its architectural and ornamental style. The inspiration is said to have come from the Alhambra in Granada and the Mosque of Cordoba.

The Moorish Casino

The casino was inaugurated on July 12, 1863. Its architect was Paul Regnault, an engineer from the Compagnie du Midi, in partnership with Jules Salesses. The Moorish casino owes its name to its architectural and ornamental style. The inspiration is said to have come from the Alhambra in Granada and the Mosque of Cordoba. The casino, built on a sand hill overlooking the city, had difficulty attracting vacationers who took advantage of the booming seaside activities on the distant beaches. And with the low attendance during the winter seasons, the casino's activities alternated between prosperity and fiasco, leading to the transfer of the building in 1879 to the town of Arcachon. The casino burned down on the night of January 17 to 18, 1977 (hypothetical accidental electrical short circuit). It was not rebuilt. A model under a plexiglass bell preserves the memory of it.

Teresa's villa

The Villa Teresa, surrounded by a large park, was built around 1882 on one of the largest building lots in the Ville d'Hiver. It was built according to the plans of the architects Miramont and Lecoeur. Its first known owner, in 1882, was Mr. Lewis, an Irish painter. Ten years later, the entrepreneur Pierre Blavy bought the "very beautiful Teresa", did not live there and invited the most prominent personalities such as the musician Charles Lecocq or the Sultan of Morocco Moulay Youssef in 1926. After Blavy's death in 1928, the villa fell into oblivion. In the 1930s, it became a children's preventorium, managed by the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul. Around 1960, it was in ruins. The Winter City Defense Committee saved it from destruction by having it included in the supplementary inventory of historical monuments in 1980.

The Villa Regina

Inaugurated in 1881 under the name of Hôtel de la Forêt, it was enlarged between 1888 and 1891 by Jules de Miramont, architect of the Hôtel Victoria and the Grand Hôtel du Moulleau. It initially only consisted of the central part, to which the two symmetrical wings were then added. It took the name of Hôtel Régina et d'Angleterre in 1906. It welcomed many distinguished guests: the Grand Dukes of Russia, the Radjahs, Paul Deschanel, Monet, Cézanne, François Coppée, etc. At the height of modernism with its hydraulic elevator, it also benefited from a splendid winter garden. It was closed in 1943, then transformed into a luxury residence for the elderly before being converted around 1990 into a tourist residence of the "VACANCES BLEUES RÉSIDENCES" chain.

Vincenette Villa

The Villa Vincenette, originally called Lona, was built for Mrs. de Aldecoa in 1895. This villa is the work of the architect Marcel Ormières (1853-1941), who built many villas in the Winter Town. His father Eugène, who worked with P. Régnauld, was mayor of Arcachon from 1888 to 1890. The contractor P. Blavy was responsible for carrying out the work. The date of 1895 on the façade confirms that the building was built at the end of the 1900th century. It features prominently in an architectural album entitled l'Architecture Nouvelle, published in the XNUMXs. It is listed among "economic houses". The architect Marcel Ormières provided it with a belvedere, ornate balconies, brick chains, but the bow window is an addition which, with its Art Nouveau stained glass windows, contributes to enriching the façade, by softening its verticality.

The Carmen Villa

The Villa Carmen in 1880 belonged to the municipal councilor Martin Hennon who welcomed the Queen Mother of Spain, Isabelle II. She, while staying in Arcachon, discovered the place where the previous year, her son Alphonse XII met the Archduchess Marie-Christine and where they became engaged. Her retinue was made up of about thirty people accompanying her and to accommodate all these people, the neighboring villa was also lent to the sovereign. During the stay of the Queen Mother which lasted a week, the Casino Orchestra and the Municipal Harmony came to play under her windows. Paul Doumer, deputy of this department, and future President of the Republic, stayed there in 1889. The villa reported as a "boarding house" is an interpretation of the Swiss chalet, a type of construction made fashionable with the first villas built by the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi.

The Anglican Church

The Anglican church of Arcachon, the "prettiest Anglican church in France" according to the English novelist George Gissing (1857-1903), was inaugurated in 1878 by the Archbishop of London himself. Dedicated to Saint Thomas, the building is remarkable for its large, steeply pitched roof and its wide barrel-vaulted nave, flanked by two aisles covered with an austere but beautiful exposed timber frame. Its first chaplain, the Reverend Samuel Radcliff (1838-1913), had contracted pneumonia in England and decided to leave his native country in search of the fresh air of Arcachon, where he settled in 1866. This unusual character took part in the activities of his adopted town by organizing "rally-papers" or treasure hunts. In 1895 he was one of the founders of the private Arcachon golf course with the Irish expatriate William Exshaw.

Fleming Square

Fleming Square, formerly Place des Palmiers, was transformed for the inhabitants of the Winter Town. This place, formerly reserved for gardeners and where the greenhouses that supplied flowers to the Parc Mauresque were located, was the subject, for its development, of learned considerations by doctors concerned about its orientation. The kiosk offered by the director of the Grand Hôtel (Résidence Carnot), after a stay at the municipal workshops, was installed in 1893. Concerts were given there every Sunday in winter. From there also departed the fox hunts or the "rally-papers" organized by Reverend Radcliff.

Place Bremontier

Place Brémontier, a green space in the heart of the Winter Town, was a meeting place for hunts organized by the Arcachon hunting societies at the end of the 1879th century. A municipal regulation dated 1738 and apparently still in force, stipulated that it was forbidden to sound a horn before six in the morning and after eight in the evening. The bust of Nicolas Brémontier (1809-1878), erected in September 1797, the work of the sculptor Alexandre Léon, recalls the memory of the author of a Memoir on the dunes published in XNUMX, who recommended fixing the dunes of Gascony to combat the "invasion of sands". The great man was at the origin of the afforestation of the dunes which was to profoundly transform the natural environment of the Arcachon region.

Villa Trocadero

The Trocadéro villa, formerly called Graciosa, was built in 1863-1864 on the model of the Swiss chalet. It is one of the first rental chalets of the Compagnie du Midi, whose plans were signed by Paul Régnauld and the work carried out by the Thèze company. Around 1900, the villa was completely transformed: its roof was "dressed" in a half-hip with a dormer-gable with an overhanging window. A peripheral balcony with an ornate balustrade and rounded corners, a veranda were added, architectural elements that evoke the colonial houses of the Indies. The side wooden staircase was replaced by a stone staircase with a balustrade, ornamenting the facade. Trocadéro bears witness to the craze for cut-out wood decoration that provided work for eight factories in the department in the XNUMXth century.

Villa Monaco

This villa is located to the left of the Trocadéro villa. Alphonse XII, who had stayed at the Villa Monaco, was going to meet his fiancée Marie-Christine, who lived at the Villa Bellegarde, on allée Faust, crossing Place Brémontier, on foot. The Villa Monaco is very similar to the Villa Sylvabelle on Allée Brémontier.

The Basilica of Our Lady of Arcachon

Faced with the ever-increasing influx of pilgrims who came to pray to the miraculous Virgin, a church was built from 1858. The new building was placed against the Sailors' Chapel, which was reduced in length. In Gothic style, the building designed by Gustave Alaux (1816-1882) was completed in 1860. Michel Alaux (1850-1935) continued his father's work in 1884, by extending the choir. This beautiful building, characterized by the alternation of stone and brick, is preceded by a bell tower-porch facing the Basin. The building is lit by beautiful stained glass windows, made by the Bordeaux workshops Villiet and Feur. The monumental paintings in the choir, executed in seven panels, were made by Guillaume Alaux (1856-1912), Michel Alaux's brother. These paintings are astonishing because their author personified with great talent the main local and regional activities.

The pier at La Chapelle and the Sailors' Cross

The Sailors' Cross, which can be seen from the forecourt of the Notre-Dame Basilica, was erected in 1902. Damaged several times, it has always been repaired. The current wooden cross, 14 metres high, made in 1980 by the Filhol company in Arcachon, is an identical copy of the one from 1902 which was accidentally knocked down. We know that in 1722, a rustic red wooden cross stood at this location. It is reported that in the past, when boats left the port, it was customary to salute with three blasts of the horn or siren, in order to ask for the protection of the Virgin. On their return, if they had managed to return to port without incident, they came to thank her. The Chapelle jetty, built in 1904, was completely rebuilt and inaugurated in June 2014. It is surrounded by the Villa Alma and Saint-Yves with its belvedere.

The Bremontier villa

The Brémontier villa, which closes the perspective of the Faust alley, is one of the first villas of the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi. It bears the name of the engineer of the Ponts et Chaussées, who, at the end of the 1863th century, developed the project for fixing the coastal dunes. Built in 1894 on the plans of the architect Paul Régnauld by the contractors Salesses and Le Thieur, it is the most prestigious and most expensive of the "rental chalets". The villa welcomed high-ranking people such as Alexis de Rymsky-Korsakoff, marshal of nobility in Saint-Péterbourg, in XNUMX. Like the first buildings of the Winter City, it reinterprets the "Swiss chalet" type, in vogue at the time, with its rectangular plan and its compact and functional architecture.

The Craigcrostan Villa

In 1880, Laird MacGregor, a Scottish aristocrat, a regular at the resort he frequented for health reasons, already owned two villas when he decided to buy a dune on which he planned to build a villa. This eccentric character, when he was in Arcachon, took a daily ride in a horse-drawn carriage. Covered with several blankets at the start, he removed them one after the other at specific locations where a valet was waiting for him to bring the blanket back to the villa. The Graigcrostan villa, built to the plans of a London architect, is in a composite style like many villas built at the end of the 1947th century. During the Second World War and until the laying of the first stone of the Lycée Climatique in XNUMX, it housed local high school students or refugees before being transformed some time later into an aerium and daycare center.

The Margaret Villa

By reinterpreting the type of "Swiss chalet" in vogue at the time, Gustave Alaux (1816-1882) designed the plans for this house, created in 1864. As with its two neighbors, "Faust" and "Siebel", the name Marguerite was chosen in homage to Charles Gounod (a regular in Arcachon), whose opera "Faust", created in 1859, had enjoyed great success by symbolizing the revival of French lyric art. The villa was rented in August 1880 by a very wealthy Russian widow, Baroness Nadejda von Meck, patron of the composer Tchaikovsky, whom she never met. She stayed there with the seven youngest of her eleven children, her servants and a trio of young musicians, including a pianist barely eighteen years old, Achille-Claude Debussy, whom she nicknamed "Boussik". At the Villa he will decipher Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony and he will begin an affair with Sonia, the Baroness's daughter.

Villa Toledo

The Bertini gymnasium-riding school, built for the Compagnie du Midi in 1862, next to the Bureau des renseignements (villa Antonina) and the Bazar Universel (now the Villa Monge), is a rustic building where riding and physical education lessons were held. The contractor Jean Monpermey, under the supervision of the architect Paul Régnauld, was responsible for the construction of this building overlooking the public space and which does not have a fence. In 1878, the building transformed into a villa known as "Romeo" according to the Avenir d'Arcachon of February 24, was owned by Gustave Alaux (1816-1882), a departmental architect who designed the plan for several chalets in the Winter Town and that of Notre-Dame d'Arcachon for the Compagnie des chemins de fer du Midi. The transformation of the gymnasium into a villa is said to be the work of the architect Jules de Miramont.

The Saint-Paul footbridge

Above the Allée Pasteur, the Passerelle Saint-Paul, with its long deck of 32 meters, spans a ravine 15 meters high and connects the dunes of Saint-Paul and Sainte-Cécile. This bridge rests on piles supported by artificial rocks of diverse geographical origins: ferruginous stones from Gironde, shell rocks from Landes, pebbles from Ariège and blocks of granite and marble from the Hautes-Pyrénées. It was built in 1863 by the engineer Paul Régnauld and his student and collaborator Gustave Eiffel. It was renovated in 1990.

Sainte-Cécile Observatory

It was built under the direction of engineer Paul Régnauld in 1862-1863 as an extension of the footbridge spanning Allée Pasteur. This "Belvedere", which rises to 25 metres, is very light with its pillars made of rails and its steps, welded to the cylindrical drums that form the central column. They are suspended by cables from the platform at the top. Having lost one of its original platforms, the Sainte-Cécile Observatory was renovated in 1990. From the top of the platform, you can see one of the most beautiful views of the Winter Town, the Arcachon Basin and Bird Island. Above, there used to be a complete mast of a large sailing ship with its top and yards, a tribute to sailing ships!

The Alexandre Dumas villa

This villa, undoubtedly one of the most beautiful and largest in the Winter City, was built in 1895 by the architect Jules de Miramont and the entrepreneur Pierre Blavy and called Alexandre Dumas upon its completion. Daniel Iffla, known as Osiris, its owner, a famous banker, philanthropist and patron, was the owner of six other Arcachon villas and the founder of the Arcachon synagogue. Highly original, the villa combines composite elements of Hispanic style and a belvedere comparable to that of rustic Italian villas. Polychromy plays an important role in this building, both in the masonry and in the carved wooden ornaments. The bust above the entrance, for example, is a replica of one of the figures of the "Genius of the Fatherland" high relief of the "Departure of the Volunteers of 1792" of the Arc de Triomphe, work of the sculptor François Rude (1784-1855).