EZTrip.com International Destination Guide and Hotel Listings

The wealth and vigour of St-Jean's seafaring past is evident in the town, most notably in the surviving seventeenth- and eighteenth-century houses of the merchants and shipowners. One of the finest, adjacent to the Hôtel de Ville on the plane-tree-studded place Louis XIV, is the turreted Maison Louis XIV (guided tours: July & Aug Mon-Sat 10.30am-noon & 2.30-6.30pm; rest of year Mon-Sat 10.30am-noon & 2.30-5.30pm; 30F/¬4.60), built for the shipowning Lohobiague family in 1643, but taking its name from the fact that the young King Louis stayed here for a month in 1660 during the preparations for his marriage to Maria Teresa, Infanta of Castile. She lodged in the equally impressive pink Italianate villa known as the Maison de l'Infante (June-Sept Mon & Sun 2.30-6.30pm, Tues-Sat 11am-12.30pm & 2.30-6.30pm; 15F/¬2.30), overlooking the harbour on the quay of the same name. It also houses the Musée Grévin waxworks museum (daily: April-Oct 10am-noon & 2-6.30/8pm; rest of year 2-6pm; 37F/¬5.65). The corner house on rue Mazarin, nearby, was the Duke of Wellington's HQ during the 1813-14 winter campaign against Marshal Soult.

In the school-book history of St-Jean-de-Luz, the wedding of King Louis and Maria Teresa was a major event. The couple were married in the church of St-Jean-Baptiste on pedestrianized rue Gambetta , the main shopping street today, though the door through which they left the church has been walled up ever since. The extravagance of the event defies belief. Cardinal Mazarin alone presented the queen with twelve thousand pounds of pearls and diamonds, a gold dinner service and a pair of sumptuous carriages drawn by teams of six horses - all paid for by money made in the service of France. Plain and fortress-like on the outside, this is the largest French Basque church inside, with a barn-like nave roofed in wood and lined on three sides with tiers of dark oak galleries. These are a distinctive feature of Basque churches, and were reserved for the men, while the women sat at ground level in the nave. Equally Basque is the elaborate gilded retable of tiered angels, saints and prophets behind the altar. The walled-up door through which Louis and his bride passed is on the right of the main entrance. Hanging from the ceiling is an ex voto model of the Empress Eugénie's paddle-steamer, the Eagle , which narrowly escaped being wrecked on the rocks outside St-Jean in 1867.