Royan
for your holidays

Royan is the main town on the Beauty coast. First at all it is one of the main seaside resort on the Atlantic coast with five sandy beaches, a yachting harbour which can receive more than 1000 boats and a very important fishing harbour. It is an economic center which extends its influence over the South West quarter of the department. (Service activities : commercial centers, craft industry, banks and insurance companies, schools). The Carel is an establishment where you can learn different languages and it is very important for the economy of the town.
 
Royan is situated on the right bank of the Gironde Estuary which is the largest one in Europe. Royan has always been a very highly coveted town.
Thanks to the seabathing in fashion in the middle of the 19th century Royan became very famous. During the “Années folles” a lot of artists came to Royan.
The town was bombed during the Liberation. So the town was declared to be a laboratory to make investigations about urbanism. The town has got an architectural heritage which represents the fifties : it is the reason why Royan was classified as a “town of Art and History in 2010.
 
Nowadays Royan maintains more and more its seaside resort vocation. It is both a tourist and cultural pole which welcomes yearly about 90.000 inhabitants during the summer holidays.
 
 

Activities and cultural heritage

Born at the end of the 19th century the seaside resort architecture offers a remarkable range of villas. The architects were full of imagination. At that time they worked on the principle that their originality had to be unrivalled : regional particularities, English cottages or exotic forms were inspirations for them according the mood of the moment.
 
The museum has been installed in a former market in Pontaillac since January 2004. You will learn there the History of the town from Antiquity to the second world war and the architecture of the fifties which left its marks on the last century.
 
Saint-Pierre church was founded in the 11th century. It is the oldest edifice in the town. In the Middle Ages it was the base of the parish different from the fortified town which was on the cliffs of Foncillon. Saint-Pierre was built in the roman style. Seriously damaged during the bombardment in 1945, economical reasons explain the portal made of reinforce concrete and the irregular forms of the vaults.
 
The temple which stands in Maine Geoffroy is one of the rare prayer house which was not destroyed. Its edification is due to Pastor Louis Gibert who was an eminant figure of the local protestantism.
 
The protestant center in Royan is a modern edifice. It is work of three architects : Hébrard, Baraton and Bauhain.
 
The main edifice in the town is Notre Dame church. It tooks three years to built it. The architects were Guillaume Gillet and Marc Hébrard in collaboration with the engineers Bernard Lafaille, René Sarger and Ou Tseng. This church is often considered as an emblematic monument of the architecture after the war.