Hôtel du Palais started life in 1854 as Villa Eugénie, the summer house Napoleon III built for the empress on the beach at Biarritz. After a fire in 1903 it rose again on the old walls as a grand hotel of red brick and pale stone, and it still stands with its back to the town and its face to the Atlantic. A restoration of several years, completed after it joined Hyatt's Unbound Collection, brought back the gilding, the silk and the parquet, and a small team of in-house craftsmen now keeps them that way.
There are 142 rooms and suites. Several suites carry the names of guests from the hotel's long past, and up on the fifth floor the old staff rooms have become cabins with round windows over the sea. Below the terrace, a heated seawater pool curves along the edge of the Grande Plage, with cabanas, a children's club and lunch served by the water through the day. The spa fills five floors, with an indoor pool, saunas, hammams and Guerlain treatments.
In the evening, La Rotonde serves dinner beneath tall windows that look out over the bay, and the Napoleon III bar pours cocktails and old champagne. Next morning, the lighthouse and the Rocher de la Vierge are each a short walk along the shore.
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Biarritz, France.
Biarritz sits on the French Basque coast, where the Pyrenees come down to the Atlantic and the Spanish border is half an hour south. It was a whaling and fishing village until Empress Eugénie made it fashionable in the 1850s, and most of the villas along the cliffs date from the decades that followed. Today the town is just as well known for surf: the long beach in front of the hotel and the Côte des Basques a little further south are where surfing in Europe took hold in the late 1950s.
The centre is small enough to walk. The covered market at Les Halles is busy most mornings, the old fishermen's port has a handful of seafood restaurants, and a footbridge leads out to the Rocher de la Vierge. Bayonne, with its chocolate makers and cured ham, is fifteen minutes inland, and San Sebastián is about forty minutes across the border. Biarritz Pays Basque Airport is five kilometres from the hotel.
What guests say.
From guest reviews, checked October 2026.Reviewers are drawn in by the setting: a palace built by Napoleon III for Empress Eugénie, right on the beach, with the Atlantic filling the windows. They single out the indoor and outdoor pools, the spa, breakfast in the rotunda and dinners with a view of the sea, and many describe a warm welcome at reception and from the concierge team. The honest drawback is value. Several guests feel the price is not always matched by the rooms, mentioning tired bathrooms, uneven housekeeping and small details that fall short at this level.
Read on Google“The dinner we had here was 10/10 and the room faced the beach, at night the beam from the lighthouse illuminated the room... combined with the crashing waves I had the best nights sleep.”
Read on Google“Both the indoor and outdoor swimming pools are beautiful and provide wonderful places to relax.”
Read on Google“Come to the Brasserie for dinner. It doesn’t disappoint. Especially if you dine on the terrace or window side.”
Through other eyes.
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