Arcachon occupies a special position on the French Atlantic coast — a Victorian seaside resort that never quite became fashionable in the way Biarritz did, and is better for it. The town sits on the southern shore of the Arcachon Bay, a vast sheltered lagoon of oyster beds, bird-filled mudflats, and sand islands. Behind the town, the pine forests of the Landes stretch away for hundreds of kilometres. The whole setup is improbable and beautiful.
The four villes of Arcachon — winter, summer, autumn, spring — are arranged up a hillside and represent one of the more unusual urban experiments of 19th-century France. The Ville d'Hiver is the most striking: a fantasy neighbourhood of ornate villas in Gothic, Moorish, and neo-Renaissance styles, built for wealthy Bordeaux families seeking sea air after doctors recommended the pine resin as a cure for tuberculosis. The trees and villas are still there, largely unchanged, and wandering through them on a quiet afternoon feels like stumbling into a forgotten opera set. The Observatoire Sainte-Cécile, an iron tower partly credited to a young Gustave Eiffel, stands at the hill's western edge and offers the best views in town.
The Dune du Pilat, rising 110 metres just south of the town at La Teste-de-Buch, is the largest sand dune in Europe and the main reason many visitors come. The views from the top — over the pine forests on one side and the Atlantic on the other — are extraordinary. The oysters are the other reason: the bay produces around ten thousand tonnes a year, and eating them at a harbour-side table with local white wine is one of the simple pleasures of this coast. Boat trips onto the Arcachon Bay visit the Île aux Oiseaux with its famous stilted fishing huts.
The town becomes very crowded in July and August; the shoulder months of May, June, and September offer the best balance of weather and manageable crowds.