A Long Weekend in Biarritz, Biarritz, France

Welcome back to The Velvet Runway and our guide to A Long Weekend in Biarritz: Where the Atlantic Meets the Basque Country. There are cities that seduce you with grandeur, and cities that seduce you with something harder to name — a particular quality of light, a feeling that life is being lived here with genuine pleasure and no apology. Biarritz is definitely one of the latter.

Perched on the Atlantic coast of the Basque Country, where the mountains of the Pyrenees dissolve into the rugged western sea, this is a city of extraordinary contradictions – Belle Époque villas and barefoot surfers. Michelin-starred restaurants and market stalls selling Espelette pepper by the string. Imperial grandeur and the nonchalance of a city that has always known it was somewhere special, and never felt the need to shout about it.

Its 25,000 permanent residents live between the Belle Époque architecture of the Hôtel du Palais, the surf breaks of the Côte des Basques, and the flavours of the Halles. For the slow traveller, this is a city small enough to walk entirely, rich enough to sustain days of unhurried exploration, and possessed of a culinary and cultural life that rewards exactly the kind of attention that slow travel demands. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).