Everything about Deauville totally explained
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For the motorcycle of the same name, see Honda Deauville.
Deauville is a
commune in the
Calvados département in the
Basse-Normandie region of
France. With its
racecourse,
harbour, international film festival, marinas, conference centre, villas,
Grand Casino and sumptuous hotels, Deauville is regarded as the queen of the Norman beaches. Since the 19th-century, the town of Deauville has been a fashionable holiday resort for the international upper class.
History
The first reference to Deauville is in 1060. At this time the village was called A Enilla and was more of a fishing hamlet than a village. A Enilla comes from the
Germanic Auwja Auwa meaning
wet meadow. The
village was originally up on the hill and a few houses were built next to the St Laurent
chapel.
Thanks to its situation near the coast, the village had a small
harbour on the river
Touques of little importance.
Deauville or Dauville owes it all to the
Duc de Morny. He described the village thus:
Cité calme, aux rue désertes, elle forme avec Trouville, animée et bruyante, un contraste absolu. Mais ce manque de vie n'est, en réalité, qu'apparent, car des magnifiques propriétés, de même que les délicieux jardins qui les entourent, sont entretnus avec un soin on ne peut plus raffiné.
In 1855 land was being bought at 5
centimes/
m²; in 1862 the same land was worth 1
Franc/
m². The buyer had indeed bought marsh land and sold constructible land.
It was in 1858 that doctor Oliffe, who owned a villa in
Trouville, decided to create a town of pleasure on the deserted sand
dunes. In 1862 the first stone of today's Deauville was laid. The duc bought 2.4 square kilometres of marsh land and dunes for 800,000 Francs. The
Touques was still unchannelled but during the
Second Empire the low tides permitted the construction of walls.
In the 1860s visits by
Napoleon III made the coast of
Normandy adjacent to Deauville fashionable, and soon speculators developed the infrastructure necessary to accommodate members of the Imperial court and the growing Parisian bourgeoisie. The railway arrived at
Trouville-sur-Mer in 1863. Using the station called
Trouville, passengers could reach Deauville in 6 hours from Paris. The
locked harbour was dug up in 1866.
Morny, who had influence at Court, managed to persuade the aristocracy that staying on the coast would benefit their health. Land was bought and large villas, sometimes even palaces, were built. A casino and hotels soon followed and rich tourists came in their numbers.
Deauville hardly suffered during the
First World War. It was during
World War II with the
German Occupation that Deauville saw most of its leisure proprieties confiscated for use by the occupying force.
During the 1960s, Deauville started to accept less fortunate visitors. It still is now a haven for the rich and famous as well as holiday makers.
Home to the
Deauville-La Touques Racecourse, the countryside around Deauville is the main
horse breeding region in France and home to numerous stud farms. As a result, the city is
twinned with
Lexington, Kentucky, the most important locale for
American horse breeding. The important
Ventes de Deauville yearling
auction is held in mid-August each year at Deauville.
Trivia
Deauville was the setting for part of
A Man and a Woman.
The screen adaption of Agatha Christie's
Murder on the Links was set in Deauville.
Deauville was the location inspiration for the fictional casino in Ian Fleming's
Casino Royale. The first of the James Bond series largely takes part in a Casino - Fleming had played at Deauville as a young man, and sets his tale of Bond versus Soviet agents in a fictional French gambling resort, drawing parallels with an actual WW2 visit he'd made to a Portuguese casino whilst working for the British secret service.
The Deauville casino is the setting for the heist in
Bob le flambeur, directed by
Jean-Pierre Melville.
F. Scott Fitzgerald mentions Deauville in "The Great Gatsby" as a place Tom Buchanan and Daisy visit on their honeymoon.
A common old joke among locals is that the wealthy bourgeoisie Frenchmen would keep their wife in Deauville and their mistress in
Trouville, making light of the disparate socioeconomic statuses of the two neighboring seaside villages, Trouville being a working class fishing village and Deauville being home to exclusive shops and expensive real estate.
Deauville, together with Cabourg and Trouville, provides the basis for the Norman coastal resort of Balbec in Marcel Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (Remembrance of Things Past). For a discussion of Proust's use of Norman locations and the interplay between the social structures of his novel and the region's place in French social history, see http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-925688-8.pdf
Twinnings
Deauville is twinned with:
Further Information
Get more info on 'Deauville'.
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