The three French Basque provinces run from the surf beaches at Biarritz and Hossegor into the first Pyrenean foothills, and they keep a language unrelated to any other in Europe. Biarritz became a resort when Empress Eugénie built a palace on the beach in 1855 and became a surf town a century later; Saint-Jean-de-Luz has the church where Louis XIV married; Bayonne makes the ham and the chocolate. Inland, Espelette dries its peppers on house fronts and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port is where most walkers start the Camino over the pass to Roncesvalles.
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Headline places
What you come to French Basque Country for.
Cities & bases
Where to sleep inside the area.
The region it sits in
Tourism areas and administrative regions are different geographies — both are true, and both are browsable here.
