Hôtel Normandy Barrière

You’re standing before one of Deauville’s great icons: the Normandy Hotel. Picture the summer of 1912, when this palace first opened its doors. With its H-shaped layout, half-timbered facades, and dormer-topped roofs, it looks like something straight out of a Norman fairytale: part manor house, part movie set. At its center lies the “Norman courtyard,” a hidden garden planted with apple trees.

Just a year after its opening, a young woman named Gabrielle opened a boutique under its arcades. The world would soon know her as Coco Chanel, and this was her very first fashion shop to bear her name—just steps from the beach and the famous Boardwalk. The hotel itself was conceived as the perfect counterpart to the Casino, both the brainchild of impresario Eugène Cornuché.

In fact, an interior corridor once connected the two, so the fashionable crowd could slip straight from luxury suites to gaming tables without ever stepping outside. The interiors matched the grandeur: a monumental hall crowned with an elliptical vault, a bar paneled in Louis XVI woodwork, and a restaurant decorated in the style of the Queen’s salons at the Château de Fontainebleau.

The Normandy’s story unfolded alongside the growth of the town: an extension in 1925 to welcome even more holidaymakers, then a full renovation in 2015 to 2016 that modernized the hotel while preserving its soul. That’s when the rooms were dressed in Toile de Jouy, the refined fabric that perfectly embodies the Anglo-Norman style. But the Normandy is also a cinema legend.

Claude Lelouch shot several scenes of A Man and a Woman here, the Palme d’Or winner of 1966, forever linking Deauville with the romance of the silver screen. Today, the hotel honors that film with a suite named after it. Many others have chosen it as a backdrop too, from the English Poirot series to French comedies, securing its place as a cult setting.

One glance is enough to see why the Normandy remains Deauville’s ultimate symbol: a palace that’s at once Norman manor, English club, and movie stage. Between luxury and legend, it captures the spirit of the town like no other.