Biarritz · Basque coast · 44 rooms
A bathing pavilion that never stopped taking guests
Verriere Quay stands on the low cliff above the surf in Biarritz, in a Belle Époque pavilion built for sea bathers. Iron verandas run the length of the facade. The shutters are scoured pale by salt, and we repaint them every second spring because the Atlantic insists on it.
Downstairs, under the lobby, the tiled seawater pool still fills from the same intake it has used since 1903. Upstairs, on the first floor, the hotel runs its own casino inside the building, a few steps from where you check in.
Write to receptionStay
Forty-four rooms, no two the same width
The pavilion was never built on a grid, so the floor plans wander. Every room has been rewired and replumbed, though the parquet, the shutters and most of the ironwork are original.
- Veranda Double
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Front of the house, with a door onto the shared iron veranda and the sound of the break coming through it all night.
- Shutter Room
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Set back over the courtyard, quieter than the front, with the tall louvred shutters that give the room its name and a deep stone sill wide enough to sit on.
- Pavilion Suite
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Two corner rooms on the top floor knocked together in 1978, with a sitting room, a bath under the window and a view down the coast toward the lighthouse.
Eat & drink
Four rooms where something is served
All four are open to guests and to anyone who walks in off the Avenue. It's worth booking in August, and the rest of the year you can just turn up.
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Salle Verrière
Breakfast, 7–10.30
The old glass-roofed bathing hall. Bayonne ham, soft cheese from the Ossau valley, bread from a bakery two streets up, and coffee that keeps coming.
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Comptoir Marée
Lunch and dinner
Fifteen stools around a marble counter. Whatever the boats landed at Saint-Jean-de-Luz that morning, usually cooked over coals and put in front of you without fuss.
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Bar Ferronnerie
Noon until late
Named for the wrought iron it sits behind. Txakoli poured from a height, Armagnac, a short list of cocktails, and a plate of anchovies if you ask twice.
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Le Bassin
Pool level, 11–18
A tiled nook beside the seawater pool. Tea, soup, a sandwich, and the particular quiet of a room one floor below the street.
Inside the hotel
Verriere Quay Casino, on the first floor
18+
Verriere Quay Casino belongs to the hotel and sits inside the same building. From the lobby, take the stone stairs beside reception or the small lift in the corner, and you're on the first floor in under a minute. The casino fills one room up there.
The room is small: a few tables, a bar along the north wall and three iron windows facing the Avenue. The casino opens in the evenings and closes when the last table does.
The casino's dress code is relaxed. A collar and closed shoes will do, and nobody at the door is going to inspect you.
You must be 18 or over to come in, and photo ID is checked at the door on every visit, even for hotel guests the casino staff already greet by name.
Limits are agreed on the floor with whoever is on duty that night, so ask before you sit down. If you'd like to stay out of the casino altogether, reception arranges self-exclusion in person at the desk. Bring ID and allow a few minutes.
This is a land-based casino inside a hotel in Biarritz. The website offers no online casino games, takes no bets, holds no accounts and accepts no deposits or payments.
Getting around
Where you are, and how far
- Biarritz Pays Basque airportFour kilometres south. A taxi takes about twelve minutes; bus line 4 drops you two streets away and runs until mid-evening.
- Biarritz TGV stationThree kilometres inland, on the Paris–Hendaye line. Reception will order a car, or the A1 bus runs to the centre every twenty minutes.
- The beachesGrande Plage is six minutes on foot down the cliff path. Côte des Basques, where the longboarders go, is a fifteen-minute walk south along the front.
- Bayonne and San SebastiánBayonne is nine minutes by train. San Sebastián, across the Spanish border, takes a little over an hour by car or the Euskotren from Hendaye.
Find us
Reception answers from seven until midnight
- Address
- Verriere Quay
22 Avenue des Alcyons
64200 Biarritz
France - Telephone
- +33 5 59 47 82 16
- [email protected]
- Reception
- Staffed 07.00 to midnight. Night porter on the bell after that.