Biarritz: The Whaling Town That Empress Eugénie Turned Into Europe's Aristocratic Décor

Biarritz is one of those places that on paper look like a boutique-tourism story, but are in fact a genuine historical crossroads. The French Basque town on the Atlantic coast was a whaling village until the 19th century, when Empress Eugénie de Montijo, the Spanish noblewoman married to Napoleon III, turned it into an aristocratic retreat. From there Biarritz only went up - Belle Époque villas, the Hôtel du Palais, the Art Deco casino, and a Russian Orthodox church to signal that the Russian nobility wasn't going to skip their holiday here either.

Today Biarritz is a strange mix - 6 kilometres of wild beaches, the European capital of surfing, and at the same time a town where dresses by Chanel and Hermès turn up on the same street. Spanish journalist Helena Resano chose it as the setting of her first novel "Las rutas del silencio," the story of a young girl who after a family tragedy puts her life back together piece by piece.

"Biarritz lets me completely disconnect," Resano says. "Here I become anonymous again." That's what Biarritz sells as its real luxury - not the wealth, but the ability to disappear into a crowd at midday.

For the Balkan tourist Biarritz may sound expensive, and rightly so. But there's a one-day visit that works: a cheap flight to Bilbao, then a two-hour bus to Biarritz, a day on the beach and dinner in one of the hundreds of small fish restaurants. It can be done for under 200 euros, and you watch the same sunset Edward VII and Empress Eugénie watched. History plays evenly for everyone.