INHERITANCE & cultutre

TCHANQUEES HUTS
A stonishing Silhouettes at the horizonlike sentinels posted at the accesses of the island to the Birds, the tchanquees huts were in the beginning high in order to shelter guards charged to supervise the oyster parks. Perched as the landean shepherds on stilts (tchanques in Gascon), they enabled them to have a unspoilable view on the Basin of Arcachon, from which they became the symbol. The first hut was built in 1883. Corroded by the parasites and salt, it was destroyed in 1943. The two current huts out of wooden date back to the post-war period.

The BASILICA NOTRE DAME
the basilica NotreDame is the spiritual heart of Arcachon. She is raised on the site where the monk illyricus made a vault out of wood to shelter the sculpture of the virgin and the Jesus Child thathe had found on the beach in 1519. This first Vault of the Sailors was rebuilt out of stone about 1564, replaced by a vaster building in 1722, then, in 1856, enclosed in a church making it possible to accomodate the surge of pilgrims. Enlarged in its turn in 1883, this church was set up in basilica by Pie XII. Each 25 March, day of the Annunciation, many sailors, faithful to the tradition, come to ask protection from the virgin and to the Child.