Le Touquet-Paris-Plage (; ), commonly referred to as Le Touquet (), is a commune near Étaples, in the Pas-de-Calais department, northern France. It has a permanent population of 4,224 (2023) but it welcomes up to 250,000 people during the summer, so the population at any given time during high season in summer swells to about 30,000. Located on the Opal Coast of the English Channel at the estuary of the river Canche, the commune is one of the most renowned seaside resorts in France, with a wide range of sports and leisure activities.
The name "Le Touquet" is attested in the mid-18th century to designate the cape next to which the town was built. , a notary in Paris, bought the land on the cape, planted a forest and built a small palace there, and in 1882 founded the seaside resort as Paris-Plage. John Whitley, an English businessman, saw a lucrative opportunity to build a resort for (mostly) English and French elites, so he became the owner of most of the town's lands. The construction boom that followed his acquisition led to the government recognising Paris-Plage as a separate commune in 1912. Numerous prestigious hotels were built, and at its peak of prosperity in the Roaring Twenties, the resort boasted the biggest casino in France by revenue, ultra-luxury hotels and an upscale clientele. The bustling town had good transport connections thanks to and , and, since 1936, a dedicated airport. The Great Depression brought some problems to the resort but it still remained popular with the British upper class. World War II, however, brought extensive destruction as the Germans deployed about 100,000 mines and the Allies bombarded the resort in 1944. After World War II, most of the upper class chose vacations on the French Riviera instead, and the property they sold was bought up by well-off locals.
While most of the original buildings were lost due to destruction during World War II, some surviving villas represent the unique architectural style that was popular in the interwar period. 21 buildings in the commune are protected as historical monuments. Le Touquet also has extensive natural heritage protection because of its dunes and the unique nature of the Canche estuary. This, together with its initial inception as an upper-class resort with extensive sports facilities, which it still mostly is, contributes to consistently high positions in quality-of-life rankings. Today, most of its permanent population is retired. President Emmanuel Macron often spends time in Le Touquet and votes there because Brigitte, his wife, has strong ties to the town and inherited in 1985.
Etymology Touquet There are two theories as to the meaning of the word Touquet. The more prevalent explanation goes that the name derives from the Old French touquet, meaning "bend" or "corner". writes that in the Middle Ages, if a house was located around the corner, people would say it was located , or, in modern French, . This logic was applied to this area because what is now the easternmost part of Le Touquet and the village of Trépied was where the land ended. The shore was in a form of a cape ("corner"), limited by the river Canche to the north and the English Channel to the west. This interpretation found support in works analysing the names of the northern French coast. In fact, the Dutch name for Le Touquet is . A 1982 publication about Le Touquet by a local historical society also agreed with this finding. The academy added it could be that the cape's name came from the fact that it is located on the edge of Picardy.
An alternative theory posits that Touquet is related to the words "forest" and "wood". Historian Auguste Longnon suggests that placenames like Le Touchet may have a link to Le Touquet. If that is true, Le Touquet's name derives from a word meaning "ornamental wood". Linguists Albert Dauzat and Charles Rostaing also suggested this hypothesis might be true. Their proposed evolution of the toponym starts from La Touche (Tochia in 13th century) and Les Touches (Tuschiae in 14th century). Two steps then happened: first, an -ittum suffix was added, which gradually became -et; after that, the [ʃ] sound changed to a [k] sound, a common transition in Normandy and Picardy. In their opinion, the word ultimately derives from a pre-Latin form meaning "grove" or "wood reserve".
Mentions of the word Touquet in the area were already appearing by mid-18th century. A map by cartographer César-François Cassini de Thury recognises the area as . A 1764 map by another cartographer, Jacques-Nicholas Bellin, indicated that the name for the shoals of the river Canche was . Ten years later, a hamlet of neighbouring Cucq was identified as ().
Paris-Plage While the origins of the name "Touquet" are obscure, the "Paris-Plage" part is easily traceable. In April 1882, created the first subdivision within the cape's area and called it Paris-Plage, following advice of the late Hippolyte de Villemessant, editor-in-chief of Le Figaro. In 1874, Villemessant had written a letter that commended the qualities of the then-empty beach of Touquet. He described it as "more beautiful than that of Trouville" and that he wanted to make it an "Arcachon of the North". Both cities are renowned seaside resorts. Le Touquet, in his view, would resolve the "Paris-on-Sea () problem" for the people living in Paris – in other words, that it would become the destination of choice for Parisians looking for a beach resort. The French government first acknowledged the name in 1892 in an order of the Prime Minister, Émile Loubet and the minister of the interior. The law of 28 March 1912, which separated Paris-Plage from Cucq into a separate commune, further recognised its existence under the current compound name.
This part of the name was the subject of a trademark dispute with Paris. The French capital decided to launch Paris-Plages (then Paris-Plage), an artificial beaches programme on the Seine. Paris submitted an application to reserve the name for its event. Le Touquet objected and replied with its own trademark submission the following year, which led to a lawsuit from the capital city that asserted right of priority for its own submission. In January 2008, Paris settled with Le Touquet, allowing the latter to retain its second part of the name unchanged.
History
The modern history of the Le Touquet started with , a notary from Paris, and his partners buying land on the Cape of Le Touquet. They tried without success to convert the rather unproductive warrens for agricultural use, and after they failed, Daloz bought all the land from his other partners and decided to plant a forest and build a manor on his estate. The notary founded the village of Le Touquet-Paris-Plage in April 1882, at first known as Paris-Plage. The subdivision grew so quickly that it drew the attention of John Robinson Whitley, an English entrepreneur who saw a business opportunity in creating an ultra-luxury 'meeting place' between wealthy Englishmen and Frenchmen with an emphasis on sports and generally "health through pleasure". Mayville, as he called the initial project, never materialised, but Whitley, together with his partner Allen Stoneham, persisted and finally bought out most lands from the Daloz's manor at an auction in 1902.
The English investment continued the construction boom in the town even if the initial vision of Mayville was scaled down. Le Touquet gained a reputation of a posh resort due to, among other things, several luxury hotels and an abundance of sports activities associated with the upper class, particularly those catering to the tastes of British guests. In fact, the town's first golf course was inaugurated by Lord Balfour, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. The peak of Le Touquet's prosperity came during the Roaring Twenties, as British elites dominated the life of the resort. The town had the largest casino by revenue in France just before the Great Depression. The crisis stopped the explosive growth of Le Touquet but the town came relatively unscathed because the aristocrats from the other side of the English Channel continued to come to Le Touquet as before. Many buildings built in the 1920s and 1930s were a testament of the city's riches. Wars interrupted the development of Le Touquet. During World War I, the Allied military commandeered large hotels and converted them to makeshift hospitals to treat the wounded coming from the trenches of the Western Front. Enlisted soldiers, particularly those stationed at the nearby garrison in Étaples, were banned from the town to let officers use its facilities for themselves. The town hosted 6,000 Belgian refugees and the municipal administration of the frontline city of Ypres. Military presence was reintroduced in 1939 as World War II took off. Germans captured Le Touquet during the invasion of France in 1940, where they created a local headquarters for the Wehrmacht, the National Socialist Motor Corps and the Organisation Todt. Due to its position on the coast facing Britain, Germans ordered the construction of the Atlantic Wall, which led to the town being heavily fortified and mined. Le Touquet was liberated in September 1944, but it suffered extensive damage.
The town lost much of its traits associated with the British elites as the British sold their possessions to well-off locals and as the government of France decided to prioritise the development of the warmer French Riviera, by that time another popular destination with the high society. Since the 1970s, the town pursued a new strategy formulated by mayor Léonce Deprez, who wanted to make Le Touquet a "year-round resort", so new developments included an indoor thalassotherapy institute, the enduro race called and a flea market of antique items. His efforts were helped by improved rail and car connections to the town. The commune also launched massive acquisitions of sports- and culture-related properties. Le Touquet increasingly became populated by pensioners, which, as of 2014, constitute more than half of its permanent residents.
Geography Le Touquet is squeezed between the left (south-western) bank of the estuary of the Canche river and the English Channel coast, in the western part of the Pas-de-Calais department in the north of France. It is in a coastal region that is frequently referred to as the Côte d'Opale (Opal Coast), a name that evokes the iridescent reflections of the setting sun on the sea. Le Touquet is also located in the northern part of a natural region called . On the other side of the Canche estuary is Étaples, a local transport hub and the nearest railway station. The other neighbour of Le Touquet is the commune of Cucq, to which the town belonged before 1912. That commune includes another resort called Stella-Plage, directly south of Le Touquet. Significant towns in the vicinity include Boulogne-sur-Mer ( to the north) and Calais ( in the same direction). Among larger cities, Lille is to the east and Paris, in part the commune's namesake, is to the south.
Landscape
Le Touquet has benefited from favourable dune creation conditions and accretion of sediments from the Canche to the southwestern bank, where it is located (in contrast to the opposite bank, which has been retreating). As the maps of the French demonstrate, the coastline has significantly moved towards the northwest since the Cassini map or the mid-19th century . The main vector of land accumulation today is the Banc du Pilori, a shoal to the north of Pointe du Touquet. That accumulation may sometimes cause problems because it makes the estuary shallow and forces the river to meander, with the potential to jeopardise commercial activity of the port of Étaples and Le Touquet's marina if unregulated.