Le Touquet

Le Touquet-Paris-Plage (pronounced: [lə tu.kɛː pa.ʁi plaʒ]), commonly referred to as Le Touquet, is a commune near Boulogne-sur-Mer, in the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France. It has a population of 5,355 but welcomes up to 250,000 people during the summer.

Le Touquet has a reputation as the most elegant holiday resort of northern France, the playground of rich Parisians, with many luxury hotels.

Since the mid-1990s, Le Touquet’s villas have become extremely fashionable amongst architecture lovers throughout Europe, rediscovering the “folie” of seaside architecture of both the Roaring Twenties and the 1930s. The most famous local architect is Louis Quetelart, whose style was named after him: Louis Quetelart Style.

History

Hippolyte de Villemessant (1812–1879), founder and owner of the Paris newspaper, Le Figaro. At the time it was an area of wild sand dunes and forest - part of a hunting estate. Its name came from a Picard word meaning ‘corner’, and was originally applied to the area of coast nearby. It became known as “Paris by the sea”, and strict building regulations encouraged the most talented architects to create imaginative and innovative developments.