Deauville – Trouville Resort (Normandy)

Deauville is a famous French resort, known since the end of the 19th century, which was a favorite vacation spot of the famous Coco Chanel. The nearest seaside resort from Paris (200 km – 2 hours by car), which hosts the American Film Festival, the world polo championship and the largest horse auction in Europe. There is everything that can give pleasure here: fresh air, endless sandy beaches, casinos, hippodrome, thalassotherapy centers, gastronomic restaurants, luxury hotels, villas and boutiques.

Deauville (Normandy tours from Paris)

In the middle of the 19th century, when the beaches of Trouville could no longer accommodate everyone, they began to develop the coast on the left side of the Touques River. One of the founders of the construction is considered a businessman with connections “where necessary” the Duke de Morny, the illegitimate son of Napoleon Bonaparte’s stepdaughter Queen Hortense (grandson of Josephine) and brother of the future Emperor Napoleon III. His team of realtors included bankers, doctors, and even our compatriot Anatoly Demidov (Prince Demidov-San Donato and husband of Princess Marie Bonaparte). Duke Morny actively combined business with politics, which was greatly facilitated by his beloved, the daughter of a banker. He even led the coup that made his brother Emperor. He was against the Crimean War against Russia (!), and after that he traveled as part of a delegation to St. Petersburg and married Sophia Trubetskoy. These are the people who founded the resort. By 1863, three dozen luxurious beautiful villas, surrounded by gardens, had already been built. The development of the resort was also facilitated by the fact that a railway was laid here from Paris, allowing residents of the capital to spend a classic weekend vacation here.
In 1912, a new casino was opened in Deauville, and the Duke of Morny’s villa became the Royal Hotel. Another Normandy hotel appears in the Norman style of architecture. Many villas were built in the antique style (“Suzanne”), in the old French (“Suzanne”) and even in the “Moorish” (“Camellia”). All of the above can now be viewed during the tour.

Trouville-sur-Mer Resort

Trouville from Deauville beach (Normandy tours from Paris)

Trouville (Trouville-sur-Mer). Located at the mouth of the river Touques (La Touques), where it flows into the sea strait of the English Channel, the famous beach resort of Trouville occupies the entire coast to the right in the direction of the current at the foot of the green hills. On the other side of the Touques River, Deauville already begins, so the railway station has the double name Trouville-Dauville.

Trouville Deauville RR station (Normandy tours from Paris)

World famous Casino, yachts and boats (Normandy)

At the beginning of the 19th century, there was a small fishing village of Saint-Gatien-des-Bois, which attracted the attention of the famous French romantic writer and journalist of the Gazeta de France, Gutinje. Having built a chalet here, a half-Norman half-Swiss guest house, he began to invite here his friends writers and artists, the beau monde of France of those times – Charles Nodier, Saint-Beuve, Alfred de Musset. But the best advertisement for this place was given by businessman and PR-man Alexander Dumas, known in Russia only as a writer. So in terms of popularity, the Trouville resort was ahead of Le Havre and Dieppe. In 1836, the wife of a famous surgeon from Rouen, Madame Flaubert, brought her son Gustav, the future famous writer of France, to rest here. Anne-Justine-Caroline Flaubert, a businesswoman, bought here and in the vicinity of land and forests, and her fifteen-year-old son had seen enough of women with bare breasts, neighbors at the Golden Lamb Hotel, and over time created her literary image in his novels, which everyone read France. This is how the beaches of Trouville entered French literature and became fashionable for trips from the capital. The development of roads and a direct railway line to this resort closest to Paris made it a favorite vacation spot for residents of the capital. Middle-income people built houses on the river bank, and expensive villas appeared along the seashore and on the hillsides, competing with each other in luxury and fantasy. The center of this large secular “hangout” was a sandy seaside beach. Hotels and the first casino began to appear. Resort-exotic architecture reigned. The first houses were built in the “oriental” style, such as the “Persian Villa” of Princess de Sagan. Later, in the pseudo-old style a la Louis XVI, villas of the Esmeralda type were built. But in the middle of the 19th century, there was no longer enough space on the coast, as well as land on the slopes of the hills, and resort and summer cottage construction moved to the other, left bank, of the Touques River. This is how Deauville was formed, which will be described below. The chronicle of the two seaside resorts began to develop as a whole.
Photogallery of old views of Trouville from the collection of the Union of Taxi Drivers in Paris and Nice.