Five-star hotels in Biarritz, from the Grande Plage to the lighthouse

From whaling port to imperial resort

Biarritz lived from the sea before it lived from visitors. In the Middle Ages it was a small fishing port whose main resource was whale hunting in the Bay of Biscay, until the whales moved further offshore in the 17th century; a whale still appears on the town's coat of arms.

Victor Hugo came in 1843 and feared that Biarritz would become fashionable. Eleven years later Eugénie, who had stayed there as a child, returned as empress with Napoleon III, and the Villa Eugénie was begun in 1854. The couple came back every year until 1868, and Europe's crowned heads followed. In 1956 a film crew brought surfing: during the shooting of The Sun Also Rises, the Californian screenwriter Peter Viertel tried the Atlantic waves, and local enthusiasts soon followed him. Today the commune has 26,206 residents (2023) and lies about 35 km from the Spanish border, where the sandy Landes coast gives way to the Basque cliffs.

Where to stay in Biarritz: seafront, lighthouse or garden

Biarritz is compact, so deciding where to stay in Biarritz is a question of atmosphere rather than distance.

• The Grande Plage and the centre: the beach, the Art Deco municipal casino that has faced it since 1929, and Les Halles, the covered market built in 1885, a few streets back.
• Miramar and Avenue de l'Impératrice: quieter, with Belle Époque villas and the Golf du Phare near the lighthouse.
• The fishermen's port and the Rocher de la Vierge: seafood terraces, the Aquarium and the footbridge out to the rock.
• The Côte des Basques and Milady: surf schools and sunsets below the Côte des Basques cliffs, and a spacious family beach at Milady.

The railway station lies inland in the La Négresse district, which also holds the lakes of Mouriscot and Marion, both protected by the Conservatoire du littoral.

Hôtel du Palais: Eugénie's villa on the Grande Plage

Hôtel du Palais Biarritz stands at 1 Avenue de l'Impératrice, on the Grande Plage itself. The Atout France register lists 142 rooms and a five-star classification dated 23 May 2024; Hyatt, which runs it within The Unbound Collection, counts 56 suites among them, each looking over the town or the Atlantic.

Sold by the empress in 1880, the villa became a hotel and casino. After a fire in 1903 it was rebuilt within its original walls, with two extra storeys and a semicircular restaurant over the sea, and it reopened in 1905; its façades and roofs have been listed historic monuments since 1993.

The MICHELIN Guide, which gives the hotel two MICHELIN Keys (as of 2026), calls the bay-view rooms the most desirable and suggests avoiding the rooms in the eaves if high ceilings and large windows matter. On the top floor, Le Journal des Palaces described rooms and suites with rounded windows and a maritime atmosphere at the 2021 reopening. La Rotonde - Gastronomique serves dinner with a 180-degree view of the ocean and a menu by chef Christophe Scheller. Outside, a heated seawater pool is ringed by cabanas and the solarium opens straight onto the beach, while the Imperial Spa adds a freshwater pool with counter-current swimming, a sauna, a hammam and Guerlain face and skin care.

Luxury hotels in Biarritz beyond the Palais

The Atout France register counts four five-star hotels in Biarritz, and the hotel list on this page currently shows 1 of them. Anyone comparing the best hotels in Biarritz should still know the other three.

Regina Experimental Biarritz, at 52 Avenue de l'Impératrice, stands at the top of the avenue between the lighthouse and the golf course. Its owners describe a Belle Époque building with a 15-metre-high atrium under an Eiffel glass roof, redesigned by Dorothée Meilichzon. The register lists 64 rooms, and the outdoor pool is heated from late April to October.

The Sofitel Biarritz Le Miramar Thalassa Sea & Spa, at 13 Rue Louison Bobet, faces the ocean and the Roche Percée, with 126 rooms and suites and a thalassotherapy centre built around seawater and algae. The tourist office recalls that Louison Bobet founded a thalassotherapy establishment in Biarritz in the 1970s, which still exists, and names the Sofitel's centre among the town's benchmark establishments.

Hôtel Beaumanoir, at 10 Avenue de Tamamès, has eight rooms in a restored 19th-century manor house that the MICHELIN Guide places in the leafy Parc d'Hiver, five minutes from the Grande Plage. The Guide notes that the hotel opens seasonally, from early April to mid-November.

Biarritz beaches and the birth of European surfing

Biarritz has six beaches. Miramar, behind the Hôtel du Palais, is the peaceful one; the Grande Plage is the town's emblem, with striped beach tents for rent from 1 July to 31 August; the Port-Vieux, a small cove sheltered by rocks, suits families; Marbella draws experienced surfers; and Milady is a spacious family beach with a Handiplage set-up for disabled bathers. The Côte des Basques is the legendary surf beach, but it disappears entirely at high tide.

Lifeguards supervise the beaches from spring to autumn (April to October on the Grande Plage and Miramar in 2026), and the tourist office gives an average sea temperature of 19 to 22°C from June to September. Around twenty surf schools work in town: the Côte des Basques suits beginners, with easy waves for about six hours around low tide, while local surfers favour the powerful, short waves of the Grande Plage.

The lighthouse, the Rocher de la Vierge and the fishermen's port

The walk from the lighthouse to the Port-Vieux links many of the landmarks. The lighthouse has guided ships from Pointe Saint-Martin since 1 February 1834, and 248 steps lead to a walkway 73 metres above the ocean, with views along the Landes beaches and, on clear days, to the Pyrenees.

Below the Atalaye plateau, the Port des Pêcheurs keeps 66 white fishermen's huts, the crampottes. Further on, a metal footbridge reaches the Rocher de la Vierge; the tourist office notes that it was built in 1877 not by Gustave Eiffel, as is sometimes claimed, but by the Schryvers workshops of Haumont. Facing the rock, an Art Deco building has housed the Aquarium since 1933. In town, the Imperial Chapel, inaugurated in May 1865, mixes Romano-Byzantine and Hispano-Moorish styles, and golfers have the Golf du Phare, founded in 1888.

The Biarritz year: festivals, surf and quieter seasons

Summer brings the crowds, but the tourist office's calendar runs all year. FIPADOC, the international documentary festival, opens it in January; the Biarritz Pays Basque Maider Arosteguy, founded in 1984, is presented as the oldest surfing competition in Europe; and on the evening of 15 August the town's only fireworks display lights up the Grande Plage. Autumn adds Le Temps d'Aimer la Danse, the Festival Biarritz Amérique Latine and the first storms along the coastal path, and in winter Biarritz en Lumière brightens the festive season.

Getting to Biarritz: airport, TGV and motorway

Biarritz Pays Basque Airport lies about 4 km from the centre, five minutes away according to the tourist office, and bus line 11 links the two; most of the airport actually stands in neighbouring Anglet. As of October 2026 its destination list includes Paris, Lyon, London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Geneva, among others. The TGV station, in the La Négresse district, has five TGV INOUI return trips a day to Paris Montparnasse, about four hours away, and buses 5 and 12 run into town. By road, the A63 serves Biarritz at exit 4 and the A64 comes in from Pau and Toulouse.

Beyond Biarritz: Anglet, the Basque hinterland and the road north

Anglet, the next town north, shares Biarritz's coast and airport and adds Brindos Lac et Château, with lodges floating on its lake. Txik Txak buses also reach Bayonne and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and the tourist office suggests the hinterland villages of Espelette, Ainhoa and Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, or a day trip to San Sebastián by bus or train.

For a longer south-west loop, the A63 leads north through the Landes towards Bordeaux: Arcachon has its bay, crowned at the southern entrance by the Dune du Pilat, and Martillac, in the Bordeaux arrondissement, has its own five-star hotel, Les Sources de Caudalie.