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Arcachon, an introduction

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Once a small fishing village until 1841 but the building of a railway from nearby La Teste de Buch to Bordeaux, changed all that. The link from Bordeaux was easy now and many private villas rose in the landscape. But the resort took really off after 1852, when two brothers, Isaac and Emile Pereire, took over the railway line and extended it to Arcachon. Thhey divided the residential sections into four, each named after one of the four seasons.
Although Spring and Summer really never cached on, the VILLE D�HIVER, being the best sheltered from the ocean winds and always 3degrees Celsius warmer than the rest of Arcachon, took up it�s leading role, and took to it�s fashion status by mid 19th century (Gounod, Debussy, Alexandre Dumas, Napoleon III and many more became full habitu�s. The PARC MAURESQUE is a centerpiece, named after it�s fabulous outlandish, pseudo-Moorish casino, unfortunately destroyed by a fire in 1977.Inspired by its fantasy, the usually staid 19th century Bordelais who built second homes in the Ville d�Hiver let their hair down, indulging in neo-gothic, Tyrolean, Tudor, pseudo-medieval and other fond fancies. Some of these gingerbread villas survive, many now owned by wealthy retirees.
Don�t miss the overall view of the basin from the parc Mauresque gardens, its passerelle Saint-Paul, built by Eiffel in 1862, and the observatory, reached by a 19th century lift.
The VILLE D'ETE, facing the Bassin and cooler in the summer, has most of Arcachon�s tourist facilities, seaside promenades, sheltered sandy beaches and the MUSEE-AQUARIUM. The most notorious resident of the Ville d��te was Toulouse-Lautrec, who had a house by the ocean and liked to swim in the nude, offending the susceptibilities of his neighbours. To pacify them he erected a fence between his house and the beach, covering it with obscene drawings. The furious neighbors eventually bought the house and gleefully burned the fence. Their descendants really never forgave their grandparents to have sent down the drain so many millions. This reminds me the case of Gauguin in the Marquesas Islands. His heirs finding Gauguin�s in his cabin, works cluttered with sculptures and paintings, loaded everything on to his boat and dumped the lot into the Pacific.
As incredible as it seems; somebody had the �chutzpa� drill for oil right in the middle of the park, known as LES ABATILLES, which is exploited and bottled in the spa. Since 1950, a new crop of villas has gone up on the oceanfront in Parc Pereire overlooking Arcachon�s best beach, Plage Pereire