Photo gallery of Saint-Émilion, Bordeaux, Arcachon, Dune du Pilat / France

A short trip to Saint-Émilion, Bordeaux, Arcachon, Dune du Pilat

Saint-Émilion is a prehistoric city, with fascinating Romanesque churches and ruins stretching all along streets. The Romans planted vineyards in what was to become Saint-Émilion as early as the 2nd century. The town was named after the monk Émilion, a travelling confessor, who settled in a hermitage carved into the rock there in the 8th century. Saint-Émilion is one of the principal red wine areas of Bordeaux.

Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France and has a population of 243,626 (2012). Bordeaux is the centre of the Bordeaux Métropole, with 749,595 inhabitants (as of 2013) and 1,178,335 in the metropolitan area, it is the fifth largest in France, after Paris, Lyon, Marseille and Lille, and before Toulouse. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Its inhabitants are called "Bordelais" (men) or "Bordelaises" (women).This city is the world's major wine industry capital. It is home to the world's main wine fair, Vinexpo. Bordeaux wine has been produced in the region since the 8th century. After Paris, Bordeaux has the highest number of preserved historical buildings of any city in France.

Arcachon is a commune in the Gironde department in southwestern France. It is a popular bathing location on the Atlantic coast 55 kilometres southwest of Bordeaux in the Landes forest. This city is 150 years old. At its southern entrance from the Atlantic Ocean, Arcachon Bay is crowned by Europe's largest sand dune, the Dune du Pilat.

The Dune of Pilat is the tallest sand dune in Europe. It is located in La Teste-de-Buch in the Arcachon Bay area, France, 60 km from Bordeaux. The dune has a volume of about 60,000,000 m³, measuring around 500 m wide (east-west) and 2.7 km in length (north-south). Its height is currently 110 meters above sea level. The dune has been observed to move landward, slowly pushing the forest back to cover houses, roads and portions of the Atlantic Wall. To back this evidence of coastal movement, maps from 1708 and 1786 both place areas with the name Pilat to the south and off-shore of the current dune's location.

Page1 - Page2 - Botanical garden of Bordeaux

Saint-Émilion