Cabourg

tableau comm
nomcommune=Cabourg
région=Basse-Normandie
département=Calvados
arrondissement=Caen
canton=Cabourg
insee=14117
cp=14390
maire=Jean-Paul Henriet
mandat=2001-2008
intercomm=
longitude=-0.115277777778
latitude=49.2891666667
alt moy=5 m
alt mini=0 m
alt maxi=15 m
hectares=552
km²=5.52
sans=3,520
date-sans=1999
dens=637
date-dens=1999

Cabourg is a commune in the Calvados "département" in the Basse-Normandie region of France.

Geography

Cabourg belongs to the Paris Basin. The commune is located next to the sea and the back country is a plain, favourable to the cereal culture.

History

It was from Cabourg that William the Conqueror drove the troops of Henry I of France back into the sea in 1058.

But the modern Cabourg began in 1853 with the arrival of two Paris financiers in search of a new site for a luxurious watering-place. The railway age had made the Normandy coast accessible to holiday-makers; Dieppe, Trouville and Deauville to the east had already been discovered; but here the adventurers found a virgin expanse of barren dunes and level sea-sands ripe for development. By the 1880s an unreal city of villas and hotels had arisen, in a semicircle whose diameter was the seafront, whose centre was the Grand Hotel, and whose radii were traced by a fan-work of avenues shaded with limes and Normandy poplars. [George D. Painter, "Proust: The Later Years" (Little, Brown, 1965), p. 84]

Climate

Cabourg is under the influence of an oceanic climate, with fresh summers and very mild winters.

Culture

Each year in June, Cabourg hosts the "International Festival of the Romantic Movie".

Demography

Population: around 3,500 inhabitants during winter; 40,000 during summer.

Celebrities related with the commune

Cabourg is famous for being Marcel Proust's favorite vacation place at the beginning of the 20th century; it is the original of Balbec, the seaside resort in Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past". [ [http://www.retaworks.com/random_walk/random_htm/France/Cabourg/Cabourg.htm Cabourg (Balbec)] ]

Twin towns

*Chur, Switzerland
*Atlantic City, USA
*Spa, Belgium
*Bad Homburg, Germany
*Jurmala, Latvia
*Terracina, Italy
*Salcombe, UK
*Mayrhofen, Austria
*Mondorf-les-Bains, Luxembourg
*Oussouye, Senegal
*Bromont, Canada

Notes

External links

* [http://www.cabourg.com Cabourg website] (in French)
* [http://www.cabourg.net/site_uk/index.html Official Cabourg website] (in English and French)