Le Touquet

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. File:Le Touquet-Paris-Plage - Le château Daloz à Paris-Plage.jpg|alt=A black-and-white sketch of a small palace in the forest|Daloz's palace (1864), near what is today Place de l'Hermitage File:Le Touquet-Paris-Plage - Photo simulation du projet Mayville vers 1895.jpg|Photo simulation of Mayville project (1895) File:Le Touquet-Paris-Plage - CP - Le tramway, rue de Paris.jpg|Pre-World War II postcard of Rue de Paris, the main street of Le Touquet. Note the tram File:Hôtel Royal Picardy (Le Touquet).jpg|alt=A birds-eye view in black-and-white on a luxury building|A bird's-eye view on Hotel Royal Picardy (1929); according to one contemporary review, it was "the biggest, most luxurious hotel in the world" 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. 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. The Atlantic coast beach, stretching for more than north to south, is almost fully covered by dunes stretching several hundred metres inland. The Opal Coast has good conditions for their formation: winds predominantly blow from the west directly at the coast, the beaches and the bottom of the estuary are made of fine sand, covered with psammophytic plants, i.e., plants that are able to grow on the loose sandy substrate, thus strengthening the dunes. It was not always the case, as during the Little Ice Age, the few plants that set roots in the sand were unable to counter erosion due to storms, seawater flooding or sand being blown off by wind. The exception was the stretch between Berck and Merlimont, which could sustain forests and so dunes existed there. Alphonse Daloz's planting of a forest near Cape Le Touquet had a large role in creating and stabilising dunes in Le Touquet, while also adding much recreation value to the future resort, in contrast to the warrens that were considered at best worthless and at worst a danger for nearby inhabitants. There is evidence that the dunes have been growing since at least World War II. When German blockhouses were built as part of the Atlantic Wall during World War II, they were at the top of the dunes, where the most desirable point for such buildings is. By 2004, however, they were several metres below the peak, obstructing the view of the sea for inland structures and leaving them below the most desirable point (at the dune's peak) for seaside military buildings. A 2001 study surveying a -long stretch of dunes found that on 62% of the length, the dunes were accumulating sediment beyond the margin of error; the areas where the balance was negative (8% of total study length) were located immediately near the station. Several factors cause concern for the integrity of the dunes, such as large tourist traffic Environmental protection natural heritage areas span Le Touquet; they cover its dunes, its forests and both its marine and estuarial environment Several authorities monitor the environment around Le Touquet. In 2005, the European Commission designated the estuary of the Canche river as a Natura 2000 site under the Birds Directive. Since 2008, a wider site that covers the Canche, the Authie and the Somme estuaries, as well as the coastal waters, the dunes and the beaches between them, protects five distinct habitats under the Habitats Directive. A land-based site created in 2002 (also under the Habitats Directive) includes, among others, the dunes in the south-western part of the commune; some of those dunes were bought out in 1982 by the Conservatoire de littoral, a French government agency tasked with preserving coastal areas. On the national level, the Pointe du Touquet, at the northern extremity of the commune, is protected as a conservation area ('') for its dunes and the , as established by a ministerial order in 2001. Two years earlier, the , a central government body tasked with designating protected sites, advised to create a conservation site at the Pointe du Touquet specifically to prevent new construction projects planned there. Since 2012, the area is further protected by national legislation as ,'' one of the eight French marine parks that, in this case, cover most of the eastern English Channel coast. Le Touquet's area also presents particular interest from the geological perspective because, among the three 'Picardy-type' estuaries (that of the Canche, the Authie and the Somme), only the Canche's is not built-up and is allowed to develop on its own, which is why it is also monitored on this level. According to the Coastal Scenic Evaluation System, which assesses scenic quality, this area is among the highest-ranked in Northern France. Climate The weather station of Le Touquet was opened in 1947. According to the 1991–2020 climate normal, the town has a temperate oceanic climate (Köppen classification: Cfb). In comparison to France as a whole, Le Touquet features a relatively cold, rainy and cloudy climate, but average annual temperatures are warmer than in cities in the middle of the continents at the same latitude, such as Kyiv, Astana or Calgary. Winters are generally mild, humid and cloudy, and summers are warm, though by French standards they are rather cool. Average precipitation amount is rather uniform throughout the year, but there tends to be more significantly more rain in the last three months of the year. The hottest temperature ever recorded was on 19 July 2022; Météo-France expects that by 2050, climate change will lead to increased temperatures in all seasons (particularly autumn), increased fire and heatwave risks, as well as some changes of precipitation patterns towards fewer days with stronger rain. ==Demographics==

{{Historical populations|1881|516|1886|521|1891|586|1896|687|1901|780|1906|1140|1911|1692|1921|2595|1926|3244|1931|3880|1936|3560|1946|3296|1954|3625|1962|4064|1968|4403|1975|5370|1982|5204|1990|5596|1999|5299 As of 2020, Le Touquet had 4,226 permanent and 301 temporary residents, yielding a total of 4,527 inhabitants, but real population at any given moment may change significantly based on the number of holidaymakers in the town. The '''' estimated in 2019 that the town regularly accepts about 250,000 visitors each year. Therefore, as pre-COVID estimates show, at the peak of the season in late summer, the population may boom to about 35,000 people. Permanent population is very old, as 59.5% is older than 60, including 23.7% who are 75 or over. There are also great differences in sex: 56% of the population is female, which may be attributable to longer life expectancy of women. Le Touquet's household composition, just like its population pyramid, is also an outlier. Almost half of permanent residents live alone, and only 16.6% of households have any children (compared to 31.2% of one-person households in Pas-de-Calais and 40.5% households with children). This means that the average household size is 1.69, significantly below the departmental average of 2.3 people. As is typical for resorts in France, the majority of built housing is not the main place of living, but the phenomenon is particularly strong in this city. For a population of only 4,527 people, there are 12,582 residences in the resort, of which 4 in 5 are secondary residences. Even though there are so many residences, the vacancy rate (1%) is negligible compared to about 8% in the department, region or metropolitan France. A median person in Le Touquet is notably richer than in the surrounding areas: annual disposable income reaches €30,130 per unit of consumption in Le Touquet, compared to just over €20,000 in Pas-de-Calais department and the region of Hauts-de-France and €22,800 in metropolitan France. Poverty rates are also significantly lower: 10% in Le Touquet compared to 17–18% in the wider region. However, according to the '''' assessment, in 2014 the median annual household income as a whole (€23,967) did not stand out compared to surrounding areas. == Government and politics ==

Local administrative entities (LR), current mayor of Le Touquet (2020-2026), as pictured in 2013 As in other communes of France, citizens of the European Union who are on the electoral roll in Le Touquet elect its municipal council ('). According to the Regional and Local Authorities Code and the Election Code, Le Touquet has 27 municipal councillors elected for six-year terms on a proportional representation basis but with bonus seats for the majority list. That council then elects the mayor ('), who leads the commune and the municipal council. The current term started in 2020 and will finish in 2026. Previous mayors include Léonce Deprez (1969–1995; 2001–2008) and Jules Pouget (1934–1963, with several interruptions due to World War II). For local administration purposes, Le Touquet defines ten districts with one or two trusted members called ambassadors, whose role is to be a relay between the municipal government and the neighbourhood. They may, though need not be, members of the municipal council. , North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (since 1966), a winter sports town; (B) Rixensart, Belgium (since 1970), south of Brussels; (C) Witney, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom (since 1978); (D) Sidi Bou Said, Tunisia (since 1986), an upscale seaside suburb of Tunis; (E) Cary, North Carolina, United States (since 1992); (F) Eckbolsheim, France (since 2012), a suburb of Strasbourg" Le Touquet belongs to the ' (CA2BM), an intercommunality created in January 2017 with the seat in a small inland town of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Le Touquet sends four municipal councillors to the 82-member-strong intercommunal council. Among the more important statutory powers of the council are waste and water management, urban development and public transport. Before that, Le Touquet was the headquarters of a looser ', but a local government reform in 2015 forced the intercommunalities in Montreuil (which failed the minimum population threshold introduced by that reform), Le Touquet and Berck to be one bigger unit, by order of the prefect of Pas-de-Calais. A unit called ' is a tourist board for the local region, and is separate from CA2BM, but a ' report in 2020 found it to be in organisational chaos, not least because its precise role is unclear. Central government organs are not represented in Le Touquet. The subprefecture for Le Touquet is located in Montreuil-sur-Mer, about to the southeast, and the department seat is in Arras, away. Courts with jurisdiction in the commune are scattered around the region: general courts (') as well as commercial, labour courts and courts for minors are located in Boulogne-sur-Mer; Montreuil-sur-Mer has the justice of the peace court (') and the agricultural land court; the ''cour d'assises'' (the court deciding felony cases) is in Saint-Omer and the administrative court of the first instance is in the regional capital of Lille. For statistical purposes, Insee groups Le Touquet within the urban unit of Berck, but at the same time defines Le Touquet as one of the centres of a local functional (metropolitan) area. Elections Le Touquet is located in the canton of Étaples, which one man and one woman to the departmental council of Pas-de-Calais for a six-year term, currently Philippe Fait (RE) and Geneviève Margueritte. Since 2022, Fait, a native of Cucq, is also a deputy to the National Assembly for the Pas-de-Calais's 4th constituency. Before him, this district previously elected two of Le Touquet's mayors, Fasquelle (vice-president and former treasurer of the Republicans, and also an Hauts-de-France regional councillor from 2021) and Deprez. According to the population quota of Article 284 the Electoral Code, 15 municipal councillors may participate in an electoral college to choose senators. Mayor Jules Pouget was a senator of Council of the Republic for one term (1948–1952) under the Fourth Republic. Le Touquet traditionally leans conservative, which contrasts with the neighbouring town of Étaples. The arrondissement of Montreuil-sur-Mer is on a long-term trend more right-wing than the department as a whole, and the canton of Étaples is the most conservative part of that arrondissement. However, since Emmanuel Macron's election to the presidency in 2017, his native city of Amiens and Le Touquet became Macronist strongholds, though right-leaning parties (except the far-right National Rally) still get relatively more support. President Macron has significant attachment to the city: he votes in Le Touquet and regularly spends time when not in Paris in the town. His wife, Brigitte, inherited in 1985. While it was sold in September 2025, the couple still owns residential property in the city. Results All results in the table are sorted by the share of vote in the whole constituency. ==Economy==

Almost all of the economy of Le Touquet revolves around tourism. Revenues coming from it allow the commune to punch way above what would be typical of the commune of its size. According to the assessment of the '''', even though Le Touquet has about 4,200 people, its budget size would normally have been expected of a commune of 30,000. Even though a 2023 law allowed Le Touquet to levy a surcharge on secondary residences, it chose not to. The commune's workforce activity statistics are not typical for France. In 2020, 51.6% of the population was retired and another 15.2% were not economically active, but the commune's companies and institutions still provided 3,790 jobs. On the other hand, 2022 and 2023 proved to be bumper years, the former because it was when the economy emerged from COVID-19 (950,000 overnight stays in the town) Historically (before World War II), Le Touquet boasted an enormous tourism accommodation capacity, reaching 3,800 rooms, among which 1,000 in luxury hotels. By 1965, the hotel capacity shrank to 1,540 rooms, In July 2025, the commune unveiled 92 studio apartments for seasonal workers, students of the hospitality trade school and the Republican Guards. == Architecture and urbanism ==

Le Touquet can be divided into three broad areas, each with different architecture and socioeconomic status (with relatively little social mobility between them). According to Valérie Deldrève of Nouvelle Aquitaine-Bordeaux, these are the city centre, the forest and the dunes. The city centre is located in the northwestern part of the commune. It features a concrete promenade and the beach. Some of the area in the northern part of the city centre is occupied by social housing, where 600 tenants, mostly local government employees, live. The area used to be occupied by a warehouse and a communal landfill. To the city centre's east is the forest area, which consists of villas, some as old as the town itself, whose owners are mostly upper-class (company executives, members of liberal professions and retirees who used to be either of those) and for whom the house is a secondary residence. The dunes, in the southern part of the commune, are the site of numerous post-war subdivisions (Mayvillage, West Green, Whitley) catering to the ambitions of upper-middle class owners, but further development there was halted due to concerns about the impact on the dunes. The whole area of the commune has been covered as a notable heritage site ('''') or by similar designations since 2005. Le Touquet has also been recognized for its abundance of greenery. The town's assessment in the ' shows the maximum grade of four flowers. Within that competition, Le Touquet received the grand prix in 2006 and the ' (National Tree Award) in 2007, a special award of that organisation. In 2022, the French minister of culture also granted a label of "Remarkable Garden" to a route in the centre of the city and near the conference hall. In 2023, Le Touquet was recognized as a commune friendly for dogs via the "Toutourisme" label. Because of these various factors, as well as abundant infrastructure, , a French startup that attempts to numerically estimate the quality of life in each commune of France based on public data, gave Le Touquet the grade of 77.9/100, the highest in the department and 199th out of 34,990 in France. According to another rating published in cooperation with '', Le Touquet is on 1796th position out of 34,808 and 29th among 890 communes assessed in the department.'' These high ratings, and the fact Le Touquet is a seaside resort, create a lot of interest in its real estate, which winds its prices to very high values. In March 2024, average prices went above the €10,000 per square metre mark, higher than any other city in the department. Prices are comparable to Paris; some of the 122% price growth from 2017 may be attributable to the presence of the presidential couple in the town. In April 2025, Brigitte Macron sold her inherited villa for €3.6 million, which would imply a valuation at over €14,000 per square metre. ==Leisure and heritage==

Sport Motorsports Every year in February, an off-road motorcycle and quad beach race called Enduropale (formerly Enduro du Touquet) is held on Le Touquet's beach. The event was a success as spectator count ballooned to 250,000 to 300,000 by the end of the 20th century The event was cancelled twice: in 1991 because of the Gulf War and in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic; it also had to reroute the racetrack to avoid damaging the dunes, in part because of an administrative court ruling that retroactively declared the 2002 edition illegal for violating the total traffic ban in the protected dune zone. However, the event's popularity proved resilient and beat records in post-COVID editions, surpassing 700,000 visitors in 2025. Around 1,100 to 1,300 motorcycles and about 350 quad bikes, driven by more than 2,000 contestants, participate in this race. Le Touquet also has some automobile racing significance. After the Doullens-Le Touquet race in 1904, the Automobile Club of France held an international meeting in this town in July 1911, followed by a race of elegance and tourism cars. Today rally racers participate in the , which covers most of the department of Pas-de-Calais. Its 64th edition was held in mid-March 2024. Tennis Le Touquet was part of a wider trend in pre-WWI France to create tennis facilities near the sea. Because of the town's specifics as an upscale resort, the sport was first and foremost intended to be a fashionable and leisurely activity for upper-class guests. Indeed, outdoor activities like tennis and golf were so fashionable that in mid-1920s, they inspired a whole new '' trend of .'' There were even emulations for those who just wanted to look sporty (while also wearing items that would normally interfere with physical activity, such as jewellery or high-heeled shoes). The '''', organised by Stoneham, Coubertin as well as Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia and some French aristocrats, contributed greatly to the development of the sport. Thanks to their efforts, by the early 1910s, Le Touquet hosted international tennis championships, which included the 1913 edition, one of the first wins in Suzanne Lenglen's career. Starting from three courts in 1904, the tennis complex expanded to 11 courts by 1912 and to 30 courts at the dawn of World War II. A special tennis club building was unveiled in 1923. Today, the tennis complex offers 21 clay courts (including 3 with lights), 5 covered hardcourts, 3 padel courts and a central court for with a tribune for 900 spectators, as well as a swimming pool. The number of courts makes Le Touquet's tennis club the third-largest in the country. It was one of the preparation sites for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, together with nearby field hockey and football premises, where Le Touquet AC plays. Golf When Lord Balfour inaugurated the first 18-hole golf course in 1904, Le Touquet's golf development was unique for two reasons: first, most of the golf courses operated in the South of France (Biarritz, Pau, Cannes etc.) and not around or north of Paris; secondly, unlike in the southern golf courses, where individual players promoted the course by word of mouth, the company developing the resort took that job. It also built the Golf Hotel (opened 1908). That golf course proved a success, so many more appeared on the northern coast of France to accommodate increasing demand of English elites. Wimereux, just north of Boulogne, opened its own facilities three years later, and Le Touquet had to expand with a second 9-hole course in 1910. The premises grew to the current size of 45 holes by 1931. These are: two 18-hole courses, La Forêt (the oldest one; par 71, SSS 71, ) and La Mer (built in 1931 in the sand dunes; par 72, SSS 75.5, ), and a 9-hole course called Le Manoir (par 35, SSS 35, ). The La Mer course is fairly well-regarded among golf players: in one assessment of the best courses in Continental Europe, this course was 59th and 12th in France. In 1992, the Bell family, who purchased the golf courses from Touquet Syndicate Ltd., sold them to the "Open Golf Club", a company with French owners. Horse racing near the racecourse The English developers who bought the resort's land were enthusiasts of horse racing and betting, and knowing that these sports were also the domain of the high society whose tastes they were catering to, they put much effort into its development. First competitions were already held in 1904 on a communal pasture called '''', next to the tennis courts, followed by the first international tournament (for both men and women) the following year. The Le Touquet horse racecourse is among the most important in the region of Hauts-de-France and is among the few in France that is listed on the national heritage list. Water and beach sports enjoying the beach at Le Touquet, 1918 (photo from 2010) opened in the place of the swimming pool. Note the tower to the left side of the image Despite Le Touquet being a seaside resort, at first sea activities ran somewhat in the background in relation to other sports. For the upper-class clientele, sea baths alone were not enough as they were taken for granted, so resorts competed with each other by providing a wide choice of other leisure or entertainment opportunities. A swimming pool (1931), long and wide with depth varying from to , could accommodate up to 3,500 guests on its tribunes and included such features as four diving trampolines up to above the ground, purified seawater heated to , more than 500 cabins with footbaths, a massaging hot tub, a beauty salon, a laundry service, a restaurant, a café, a teahouse and a leisure room as well as a beach games room and a large parking lot. The pool was badly damaged during World War II, but was restored to service in 1950 and stayed in the pre-war configuration until 1985, when rising maintenance costs prompted the commune to convert the area to a water park. Aqualud, as it was known, included six water slides, a jacuzzi and a wave pool, and it attracted over 100,000 visitors per year. The water park closed in 2019 for maintenance and never reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic struck. The abandoned site was a popular target for urban explorers before the commune hired security guards to deter trespassers. A luxury hotel complex, "The Dune", is supposed to take its place, but as of November 2025, its building permit is held up by numerous court challenges. Le Touquet's beach is well-suited for this kind of sport, as it is very long, straight and is not interrupted by any sort of obstacle. Henri Demoury, originally a miller in the Aisne, moved to Le Touquet after World War II, opened a workshop for land yachts and, in 1956, launched the first land sailing club in France (Blériot Club, named after the inventor who popularised the sport in Le Touquet's general area), which in 2018 counted 180 members and had 130 land yachts. Its longtime director (1995–2013) was , who set the record for the highest speed on land sails while driving on sand ( in Berck), was a three-time world champion in the discipline and served as president of the French Land Sailing Federation (FFCV) for seven years. Le Touquet held three international competitions in land sailing: the 3rd edition of the European Land Yachting Championship in 1965 and, in 2006, the 43rd European Championship and 10th World Championship (co-hosted with the town of Gravelines). Since about 1955, beach volleyball became an important activity on the beaches of Northern France, and the local club frequently participated in tournaments with rivals from other seaside resorts. Cycling Le Touquet has been host to four stages of the Tour de France: the finish point of stage 6b of 1971 Tour de France; two stages at the 1976 Tour de France, an individual time trial (stage 3) and the departure point for stage 4; and the 2014 Tour de France stage 4. Le Touquet is thus eligible to promote itself with a "Bicycle City" () label by Tour de France (one of 133 municipalities in the world). The jury found in 2021 and 2023 that the commune had a structured policy of promoting bicycle usage, awarding it with two bicycles out of four. According to another assessment, the , a national survey of bicycle usage and safety, Le Touquet's grade in 2021 on the scale from 1 to 6 (higher is better; averaged to 3.50) was 4.22 ("favourable conditions"), the third-best result in the Hauts-de-France region among 115 rated communes. Cuisine Le Touquet has some distinctive local cuisine specialties. One is the '''', a local type of ratte potatoes which are named after the town because André Hennuyer, a gardener from Le Touquet, helped revive the cultivation of that variety in the 1960s (the variety was trademarked in 1986). While farmers largely abandoned it due to low yields and poor disease resistance, this variety is prized for its characteristic nutty flavour (for that reason they notably featured in Joël Robuchon's puréed potatoes recipe). Another local dish is a fish soup prepared by Serge Pérard. Pérard says that during German occupation, he bought some leftovers from a fish market in Boulogne and prepared a crude soup out of them, and then used some of the initial broth for refinement with herbs and onions and repeated the cycle until he was confident that his final version, with sea molluscs and saffron, would be popular. Based on his new recipe, he opened the first seafood restaurant in Le Touquet in 1963. The dish proved so popular that by 1970, Pérard was bottling 3,000 soup jars per day, and had to open a new purpose-built production facility in 1991 to cater to growing demand. An invention relatively well-known in the area comes from a chocolatier called , which expanded from Le Touquet to four locations across France. The restaurant's specialty is the "chat bleu", a praline mousse sandwiched between two layers of nougatine. Cultural institutions Despite its small size, Le Touquet has several cultural institutions. Among the oldest is the , which since 1906 collects and stores objects of historical interest concerning the city. The city museum opened in 1932 on the initiative of the historical society, but closed its doors since the beginning of World War II until 1963, when its collections were retrieved from hiding. In 1989, the institution moved to a larger space, Villa Wayside, where it is located today. The museum is primarily an art gallery specialising in paintings coming from artists who lived in the pre-WWI Étaples art colony, but it also houses collections from regional artists and those who were part of the School of Paris. The Ministry of Culture awarded the museum the label of "Musée de France", a recognition of the establishment's importance. As of August 2022, it had about 1,600 users. In the interwar period, there were as many as five cinemas in Le Touquet, but only one exists today: ', with five auditoriums. One of the other cinemas ('), with one 400-seat auditorium, was converted to Casino Partouche and a nightclub. Religion The first place of worship was a small Catholic chapel built in 1886, four years after the foundation of the beach resort. It had to be expanded several times due to the influx of new parishioners, but this was not enough to deal with overcrowding during Mass. This is why a bigger church was inaugurated in 1911 in its place. It became the first church in France to carry the name of Joan of Arc, which happened 11 years before her canonisation. or 1950. However, the building itself belongs to the commune. The "Piano folies" classical music event started in May 2009, In July, there is a bi-annual solidarity festival for people with autism called "Touquether". In the second half of August, the town has a meet-up of DJs and, separately, the Touquet Music Beach Festival, an electronic music event. The "2K Festival" is dedicated to African and Latin dances. In July, Le Touquet's streets witness a waiters' race. ==Infrastructure==

Education The first school in Le Touquet was opened in 1888, which was managed privately by a Mr. Delacroix and was not free; children from poor families had to walk to Cucq to attend class in a communal school, which most did not. In 1893, the Daloz family granted a free parcel of land for the commune to build a school there; first classes, for 37 students, started in 1897. By 1905, residents petitioned the commune to split the coeducational school into one for boys and the other for girls, so the commune opened a boys-only school in 1908 (today the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry elementary school), and changed the first communal school into that for girls. By 1910, the two schools already had 110 children aged two to five; in response, the commune inaugurated a kindergarten that first opened its doors in 1912. All three facilities used a common canteen, which was rebuilt in 1978 to house six more classes. There were also two private schools, one for girls in the villa , which opened in 1915, and the other opened by the Catholic parish in 1922. Its existence was interrupted by the death of the abbot in 1947 and so it only reopened in 1955. As of 2024, Le Touquet has two primary schools: the communal establishment teaches 210 pupils, while a private Catholic one enrols 177 students; both offer kindergarten classes. File:École_des_garçons_"collège_Antoine_de_Saint-Exupéry"_angle_nord-est_des_rues_de_Moscou_et_de_Bruxelles_Le_Touquet-Paris-Plage.jpg|Antoine de Saint-Exupéry elementary school (1908, expanded 1930) File:Le_Touquet-Paris-Plage_-_École_maternelle_rue_Léon_Garet_ouverte_le_1er_octobre_1912.jpg|Another view of the elementary school File:Le_Touquet-Paris-Plage_-_Le_lycée_hôtelier_(1).JPG|Le Touquet's hospitality trade school (1972) File:Le_Touquet-Paris-Plage_2019_-_Collège_Maxence-Van-Der-Meersch.jpg|Collège Maxence Van der Meersch, Le Touquet's (lower) secondary school In 1972, construction finished at the so-called education campus ('''') where the Royal Picardy hotel had previously stood. It hosted the brand-new hospitality trade school () and the lower secondary school (), The trade school, managed by the region of Hauts-de-France, got several improvements in the 2000s, including six model guest rooms from two to four stars and a new kitchen practice. The trade school also has boarding rooms and possibility to pursue post-secondary studies in the hospitality field. In 2024, 232 admission requests were submitted for 72 places for first-year students. The cone-shaped premises are protected as an architectural monument since 2004. The department manages the Collège Maxence Van der Meersch, which moved out of the trade school to a new dedicated building near the airport in 2007. All of Le Touquet's schools are under the administrative supervision of the academy of Lille, which covers the Nord and the Pas-de-Calais departments. On the second try, investors from the (EP) quickly overcame these problems and opened a metre-gauge electrified train line on 15 July 1900. Another concessionary, (BP), followed suit with a non-electrified metre-gauge line that reached the outskirts of Le Touquet in 1910 and the city centre in 1912. There were also two 600 mm gauge tram lines, one being a circular line in the city centre and the other that was only transporting passengers at the golf course; both were built by the developers of Le Touquet and opened around 1910, but in a murky legal environment that does not allow much study of their history. The BP line, isolated from the rest of the network, had many problems during its existence: during WWI, the French Army commandeered the railway line and ordered its disassembly for military needs; when reassembled, the line was only used seasonally and was losing money. EP, on the other hand, was doing fairly well. At the beginning, the tram made 12 to 18 daily connections between Étaples and Le Touquet, but by the 1920s there were up to 32 services, which at times allowed a once-per-half-an-hour train schedule. There are no longer any railway lines within the boundaries of Le Touquet; the closest station is in Étaples. It is mostly served by regional trains to Calais, Amiens and Arras (TER Hauts-de-France), but there are some TGV connections to Paris via Calais-Fréthun and Lille-Europe. File:Le tramway d'Etaples au Touquet - Terminus.jpg|Terminus in Le Touquet (1905). The building no longer exists File:Tramway étaples paris-page.jpg|Château train stop (Étaples-Paris-Plage train line), 1900s File:Le Touquet-Paris-Plage - CP - Le boulevard de la Mer et la villa Saint-Augustin 2.jpg|Town tram turning from the beach towards the city File:Tramway du Touquet - Tramway du golf.jpg|Tram from a separate line that served the golf course File:Le Touquet-Paris-Plage - Voie ferroviaire de l'aéroport - 2.jpg|Spur line to Le Touquet airport, used by Silver Arrow trains File:Gare SNCF Etaples - Le Touquet (vue depuis la passerelle).JPG|Étaples-Le Touquet railway station, the only railway station near Le Touquet still in existence Road The main roads leading to Le Touquet are the A16 motorway (exit 26), which was opened in 1994 and connects Le Touquet with Paris and Calais, and the D939, or the old , which crosses the whole department through Montreuil towards Arras and Cambrai. The commune lies on the EuroVelo Route 4. Public transport is organised by the CA2BM agglomeration. Three regular bus lines connect the commune with its surroundings, including the towns of Berck and Étaples. Airport Le Touquet's airport first opened its doors in 1936, mostly to cater to British tourists. In the opening year, 1700 planes carrying 4600 passengers landed in Le Touquet, and the traffic doubled the following year. With the rising interest just before WWII, Le Touquet opened a new flight to the Netherlands in 1938. In the post-war years, the Silver City Airways operated a scheduled "car ferry" service from Gatwick that could carry up to 12 passengers and two small cars, expanded to 20 passengers and three cars in 1953. It was scrapped in 1967. In the meantime (1956), the SNCF, the British Rail and a French aviation company launched an intermodal (rail and air) connection between London and Paris called Silver Arrow. It allowed travel times between Paris and London to be cut to just over 4 hours while also keeping the price relatively affordable. By the 1970s, the connection was no longer profitable, so it was cancelled in 1980. Lydd Airport is located just across the English Channel; since its opening in 1955, passengers also started flying from that area. LyddAir, the only company now serving the British airport, stopped offering scheduled connections to Le Touquet in November 2018; since then, only charter flights go to the resort. The airport has bike and car rental services. In August 2023, the airport was named after Queen Elizabeth II, who had died shortly before that. By this gesture, the mayor's office wanted to "pay tribute to the Great Queen and her uncle [Edward VIII], who was in love with France, and to recognise the most British of the French resorts". Security and emergency services The very first police appeared on the streets in 1891 with the commune of Cucq authorising a for the new hamlet, and in 1896, when a regular police officer was sent to the settlement. Since 2021, the commune maintains its own municipal police force that supplements the efforts of the national police. As of 2022, these are 15 policemen supported by , and policemen watching CCTV footage, for a total of 35 police personnel. In September 2023, the Ministry of the Interior announced that policemen, who are headquartered in the town hall, would get an enlarged police station in the old building for €6 million, and that ten with horses would arrive in summer of 2024 for immigration enforcement purposes. Construction work is expected to start in mid-2026. At the beginning of the settlement's existence, the firefighters were dispatched from Étaples, but a series of fires in wooden villas forced the local landlords to invest in a fire pump, which they bought in 1901. By 1908, the municipal council voted to create an 18-strong firefighter subunit stationed in Cucq, which was expanded in 1912 to 40 firefighters; it became an independent unit in 1927. The premises in Le Touquet were built in 1935, and then opened in another place in 1957. Just after WWII, the firefighter unit had 60 people and 11 vehicles. In 2001, Le Touquet's fire station was closed, and emergency services are dispatched from Étaples. The oldest clinic in Le Touquet in existence is called . Opened in 1954, this private establishment can handle 85 patients. A public practice was opened in July 2023, with 20 cabinets and 37 doctors, including six internists, 19 specialists and 12 nurses. The nearest public hospital, the (CHAM), is located in Rang-du-Fliers, to the south-east, and can serve 900 patients. Water and waste management Le Touquet's sewage flows to the local treatment plant located in the commune of Cucq. It also treats waste that comes from Étaples and Merlimont. Opened in the early 1980s, the premises have undergone extensive modernisation in 2007–2009 that cost €11.5 million. Veolia provides water distribution services for the commune under a contract it signed with the city. Thus prices are not set by the CA2BM agglomeration, as is the case for most other communes within its boundaries, but are subject to individual negotiation. == Media ==

Le Touquet is covered by the La Voix du Nord|, a regional newspaper for northern France that is owned by Groupe Rossel, a Belgian company that also publishes the Belgian daily . has a local edition for the Montreuil region. is a local weekly newspaper covering the area closest to the city, with a readership of about 2,000. The title belongs to the ' group, which in turn is a subsidiary of '. Regional television also reaches Le Touquet. The public broadcaster, France Télévisions, covers Le Touquet in its regional channel, France 3 Nord-Pas-de-Calais. BFM TV, a private television channel, broadcasts news of the region through BFM Grand Littoral. From 2011 to 2014, Opal Coast residents could watch , but its unprofitability led to its quick closure, bankruptcy, and later acquisition by Wéo, a subsidiary of ''''. == Notes ==