Historic and very very chic
Le Touquet attracted wealthy visitors right from the get-go. It was the place where jet-setters went to see and be seen. Hollywood celebrities, millionaires, politicians, anyone who was anyone came here to play.
Author Ian Fleming wrote Casino Royale based on Le Touquet’s casino, where coincidentally Cole Porter wrote the music for “Anything Goes” on the casino piano. Sean Connery came here to sign his first James Bond contract. Serge Gainsbourg got his big break singing in a restaurant here.
Winston Churchill spent summers in Le Touquet and once claimed that so many members of Parliament were there on holiday that he might as well move the business of Government there. Writer HG Wells eloped to Le Touquet and the Dolly sisters, vaudeville performers who captured the hearts of men around the world strolled along the front with their pet tortoises set with a pair of four-carat blue diamonds by Cartier, given to them by millionaire Harry Selfridge, of London Selfridges fame when he took them there on holiday.
Of course all these people needed places to stay and Le Touquet in the early 1900s boasted the biggest hotel in the world. Le Royal Picardy had 500 bedrooms and every one of them had a private bathroom. In 1930 when it opened – that was unheard of. There were 120 lounges. And, 50 apartments that were so large that each one of them had its own swimming pool as well as a kitchen, and 10 more rooms including for one’s butler. If you was disgustingly rich in those days – you stayed at this hotel.
Sadly it is no more but another famous hotel of the day survived - The Westminster whose art deco halls are lined with signed photographs of past guests from Marlene Dietrich to Roger Moore and Charles de Gaulle.