Golf de Biarritz le Phare

Few golf courses in Europe carry the historical weight of Le Phare. Willie Dunn Jr. designed it in 1888, making it one of the oldest courses on the continent, built at the height of Biarritz's Belle Époque heyday when the Basque Coast had become a playground for European royalty and aristocracy. The Empress Eugénie had already put the town on the fashionable map, and golf arrived as the natural leisure companion to the grand casino and palatial hotels lining the Atlantic shore.

The course sits within the town itself, compact and urbane, with the Biarritz lighthouse — the phare of its name — standing as a landmark beyond the fairways. The layout demands precision over power: tight lines, subtle contours, and a parkland character shaped by more than a century of continuous play. It rewards players who think their way around rather than muscle through.

Biarritz itself remains one of France's most atmospheric resort towns — surf culture and Basque identity layered over that faded aristocratic grandeur. Le Phare captures that duality perfectly: genuinely historic, yet very much alive.