Pau: Historic Landmarks and Pyrenean Views

Pau is the prefecture of Pyrénées-Atlantiques and the former capital of Béarn. Around 50 kilometres from Spain, the city has a built heritage shaped by its political past and by the mountain landscape to the south. The axis between the château and Parc Beaumont provides a useful orientation before exploring the churches, squares and museums of the centre.

From the boulevard to the château

Built in 1899, the Boulevard des Pyrénées links the Château de Pau with Parc Beaumont while opening towards the Pyrenean chain. Jean-Charles Alphand, a close collaborator of Baron Haussmann, designed it as part of an effort to establish Pau as a winter resort for affluent visitors. Hotels and former palace buildings developed along the promenade, with the open prospect towards the peaks integral to its design.

The Château de Pau occupies a hill above the Gave de Pau, a tributary of the Adour. Its medieval and Renaissance fabric reflects two distinct uses: it began as a defensive stronghold and was later adapted as a residence. Henri IV was born here, and the château underwent restoration during the reign of Louis-Philippe. In 1848 it was also used to confine the Algerian military leader Abd El-Kader. The building later became a museum devoted to Henri IV.

Churches and civic squares

Saint-Martin was Pau’s only parish church until 1801. The earlier building was demolished in 1855 and replaced on a nearby site, with the new church consecrated in 1871. Émile Boeswillwald combined a largely neo-Gothic design with Byzantine decorative influences and broad arches that add a Moorish note. A similar Byzantine influence appears in another of his works, the imperial chapel in Biarritz.

Place Royale was laid out at the end of the seventeenth century at the request of the Estates of Béarn, which wanted an appropriate setting in honour of Louis XIV. Initially small and closed off from the mountains by a southern wall, it was altered in the nineteenth century to open the view. The square contains Pau’s town hall and the former Hôtel de France.

Place de la Libération brings together Saint-Jacques Church and the law courts. The courthouse has a columned front capped by a marble pediment. Saint-Jacques was built in the mid-nineteenth century over an older chapel associated with the Cordeliers convent. Work completed in 2012 restored its spire, timber frame and three of its fifty-four stained-glass windows.

Art, equestrian heritage and the Ossau Valley

Pau’s Fine Arts Museum opened in 1931 in a building whose cross-shaped plan and exterior columns draw on Greek and Byzantine forms. The collection concentrates on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It includes works by Degas, Boudin and Fantin-Latour, followed by artists such as André Lhote, Lucien Simon and Albert Marquet.

South of the city, the Pau-Gelos national stud occupies more than 13 hectares. Its architectural ensemble includes six large stables, a ceremonial saddlery and an eighteenth-century château.

The Ossau Valley begins about 15 kilometres from Pau. Around Arudy, the scenery is that of middle mountain country; in the Laruns area, the terrain ranges from lower valleys to high mountains. Villages follow narrow streets fitted to the relief, with pasture and orchards between the houses and the forest.