Sara
Mohr
FR
450
Ville d’Hiver: Arcachon
A week or so after I arrived in
Bordeaux, I started a two-week French language course offered to me by the
Science and Technology faculty. This
course, unlike the subsequent three courses I’ve been enrolled in, included
trips to other locations as part of our fee.
In the midst of a personal housing crisis, I will admit that I did not
listen very well to the professor. While
I showed up to go on the trip to the dunes and the beach, and even remembered
to bring a lunch, I didn’t really put it together that going to the beach meant
I should bring my swim suit.
As such, the day trip consisted,
embarrassingly, mostly of my finding out things I should have already known by
paying more attention during the week.
I’ll begin with the first stop on our little trip: la Dune du Pilat. Sounds fun!
Little did I know that the full name of this dune is La Grande Dune du
Pilat, and it is the largest dune in Europe.
According to the official Dune du Pilat web site, it currently measures
110 meters high—for the non-metrics among us, 360.892 feet, or about 72 Saras
stacked directly on top of each other (La Grande Dune du Pilat). And honestly, finding 72 of my doppelgangers
would be much easier than climbing that dune.
It was, in a way, like climbing the Red Rock Arena in Colorado; amateur
anticipation to see the view from the top, but better suited as a place for
elite athletes to train. Had I known
that this dune was enormous and exercised my quads more than I ever needed, I
might have been a little more prepared, and not imagined tiny dunes for
relaxing the whole bus ride there.
Relaxing was, however, next on the
list at the Arcachon beach. To my
knowledge, I was the only person not prepared for this relaxing, and I had not
brought my swim suit, a towel, or any sunscreen. As a result, I am now the proud owner of a
kitten souvenir towel and a permanent keyhole back tan line. Because everyone else was in the ocean, I was
sitting alone on my towel in the sand eating my lunch when the professors
announced that they would be leading a tour through Arcachon’s Winter
Village. Winter is cold, and as I was
overheating, I latched onto a group of Germans heading that way and left the
beach.
Once again, my lack of information
had me at a loss for expectations. I
expected the Winter Village, La Ville
d’Hiver, to be one of those cute towns always decorated for Christmas. It is not.
It’s a regular town filled with large villas on sloping hills with lots
of staircases built into the hillside that will wreak further havoc on your
body. The history behind the Winter
Village was entrancing, though, and you could almost forget about the heat and
your sandal-ed feet trekking another three miles that day. Each villa we stopped at had its own special
story and seemed to be almost themed to distinguish themselves. They are so distinct, in fact, that within a
matter of minutes I was able to match this Facebook photo of my group at a
villa to that exact villa in 1978 using only a single compendium of Arcachon
and my rudimentary detective skills.
[Fig. 1 Just a Few Photos of Our Group 2015] [Fig. 2 Villa Teresa 1978]
Arcachon was originally known only
for the Ville d’Été, the Summer
Village, which still rests below the relatively more recent Winter
Village. According to an article by
Gubler, when Napoleon III, his wife, and the prince visited Arcachon for two
hours in 1859, his wife mentioned that it would be a good location for a winter
village (Gubler, 1988).
It wasn’t until 1862 that the Péreire
brothers made full purchase of the future Winter Village land and set about on
their business plans (Guerrand, 1988).
The Péreire family was wealthy, and made a habit of making excellent
investments. The Winter Village was an
aggregate of both financial and medical interests for the brothers as they set
out to build sanatoriums, or cure stations, for patients of tuberculosis. Pulmonary tuberculosis was the leading cause
of death for those aged 15-25, and many physicians subscribed to the teachings
of Galien: “the air that we breathe is more important than the medications that
we take”[1] (Fleury, 1988). According to the same article by Fleury,
tuberculosis sanatoriums were popular in the mountains at this time, as a place
to breathe clean air into your tuberculosis-ridden lungs, but that none had yet
been built on the Atlantic Coast due to the aggressive ocean winds. It was these same aggressive ocean winds that
Arcachon doctors believed kept their marine workers tuberculosis-free despite
their hygiene and working conditions (Fleury, 1988).
The 23 villas built by the Péreire
brothers as tuberculosis sanatoriums were completed in the winter of 1864 (Marrey,
1988). The villas had at least three
master bedrooms, but up to eight or even ten per villa (Guerrand, 1988). They cost three to five cents franc in winter
months, and four to seven in the summer months (Marrey, 1988). Oscar Dejean wrote at the time that Arcachon
had all of the urban advantages of medical care in an exotic location, “…a kind
of French Océanie. It’s Tahiti some
kilometers from Bordeaux”[2] (Guerrand, 1988).
Because of the Winter Village’s medical
prominence, doctors took a large part in the government as well. M. de Gabony at the inauguration of his Hôtel
Continental in 1890 said, “I bow before the medical body and I affirm that it
is only to them that the beautiful Arcachon city has the right to its initial
development and its uninterrupted progress”[3] (Fleury, 1988). After the recession following WWI, the
medical side of the Winter Village began its decent into tourism. Following the death of the last surviving
medical founder in 1935, the remaining members of the legion of doctors left
Arcachon just a few years before the discovery of antibiotic treatments for tuberculosis
(Guerrand, 1988). By 1939, Arcachon and
the Winter Village contained only the bourgeoisie (Fleury, 1988).
It was found that the Winter Village fared
no better rescuing patients from tuberculosis, with only an eight percent
improvement rate; no better or worse than any other sanatoriums of the time (Fleury,
1988). However, in 1952 it was stated in
a journal of hydrology and climatology that if coastal climate was recommended
against in every case of tuberculosis, the sanatoriums of Arcachon and Menton
were the exceptions (Guerrand, 1988).
The University of Bordeaux makes
international students undergo a tuberculosis test if they come from a
high-risk country, and as far as I’ve heard, none of the Spanish students
tested have been positive. Whether this
is because they were cured by our trip to Arcachon is unknown, but I would
recommend a trip to the Winter Village regardless of your tuberculosis status. My only suggestion is to wear sturdy shoes;
but I personally would like to see the city in its natural season, the winter,
so boots may be more appropriate.
Works Cited
Fleury,
R. (1988). La Ville d’Hiver d’Arcachon: Grandeur et Décadence. In Institut Français
d’Architecture.. P. Mardaga (Ed.). Arcachon
la Ville d’Hiver (7-11). Liège:
France.
Gubler,
J. (1988). Entre Mer et Forêt: La Ville aux Balcons d’Argent. In Institut
Français
d’Architecture. P. Mardaga (Ed.). Arcachon
la Ville d’Hiver (75-109). Liège:
France.
Guerrand,
R-H. (1988). La Ville dont les Princes
Furent des Médecins. In Institut
Français
d’Architecture. P. Mardaga (Ed.). Arcachon
la Ville d’Hiver (59-73). Liège:
France.
La Grande Dune du Pilat. An Exceptional National Monument. Web.
06 Nov. 2015.
http://www.ladunedupilat.com/
Marrey,
B. (1988). Arcachon ou Le Levier de l’Idée. In Institut Français
d’Architecture. P.
Mardaga (Ed.). Arcachon
la Ville d’Hiver (31-57). Liège:
France.
Images
Fig.
1 Sienkiewicz, M. (2015). Just a Few Photos of our Group… [digital
image]. Retrieved 06
Nov. 2015 from Facebook.
Fig.
2 Chabot and Dubau (1978) Villa Teresa,
[photograph]. From Inventaire Général-
Aquitaine,
retrieved from Arcachon La Ville d’Hiver (pg
198), Institut Français d’Architecture.
(1988). Arcachon la Ville d’Hiver. P. Mardaga (Ed.). Liège: France.
[1] Original text: “l’air que l’on
respire est plus important que les medicaments qu’on absorbe,” p.8
[2] Original text: “…une sort
d’Océanie Française. C’est Taïti à
quelques kilomètres de Bordeaux…” p. 60
[3] Original text: “Je m’incline devant
le corps médical et j’affirme que c’est à lui que la belle cite arcachonnaise
doit son développement initial et ses progress ininterrompus,” p. 9
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