The Bains Dunkerquois is a large Art Deco public bathhouse built in the 1930s on the seafront esplanade — one of several ambitious projects that gave Dunkerque a dash of modernist architecture before the war. It was damaged in the fighting of 1940 and again in subsequent bombing, and has never fully reopened. Today it stands in a state of picturesque decay, its tiled facades and rounded forms still clearly elegant despite decades of coastal weathering and deferred maintenance.
The building is occasionally accessible for special events and cultural projects — the municipal authorities periodically discuss restoration — but for most visitors it is an exterior prospect, viewed from the beach esplanade. As a piece of interwar civic ambition meeting postwar neglect, it is a more honest monument to Dunkerque's 20th century than many of the town's official commemorations.