Bagnères-de-Luchon

A tourist town (also known as Luchon for short) and a commune (about 3,000 inhabitants) in France, located at the foot of the Pyrenees, in the Haute-Garonne department of the Occitanie region, in near the border with Spain, 816 km from Paris. A well-known, elegant health resort, frequented by representatives of the European and world elites since the mid-19th century, connected to the Superbagnères ski resort from the early 1920s.


Bagnères-de-Luchon was known as a health resort as far back as Roman times. The local waters are said to have healed in 76 B.C.E. one of the soldiers of Pompey's army, returning from an expedition to Spain, and in 25 BCE on the order of Tiberius, thermal baths were built here, boasting the motto Balneum Lixonense post Neapolitense primum, still in force today. The "second opening" took place in the second half of the 18th century, when (in 1759) Baron Antoine Mégret d'Etigny came to Luchon. He rebuilt and expanded the thermal baths so that already in the 1760s the spa was visited by French aristocrats. In the 19th century, the wife of Napoleon III, Empress Eugenia, representatives of other European royal families, writers (including Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant) and famous artists used to come here. In 1873, a railway line was brought to Luchon, in 1870 a casino was opened, later golf courses, an aero club were built, and finally, in 1922, Superbagnères was inaugurated - one of the oldest ski stations in France equipped with ski lifts and other such facilities for guests . In 1910, the town of Bagnères-de-Luchon was on the route of the Tour de France cycling race for the first time, later being the starting or finishing point of one of the stages several dozen more times.

Today, the Superbagnères ski station, located southwest of the city center and connected to Luchon by a gondola lift is - together with the thermal baths - the main attraction of Bagnères-de-Luchon. In the summer, cycling is the most popular sport - thousands of cycling enthusiasts climb to Superbagnères, the Col de Peyresourde pass , located at 1,569 meters above sea level on the D618 road between Bagnères-de-Luchon and Arreau or the Col du Portillon pass , located at an altitude of 1293 m above sea level on the border with Spain, connecting the Luchon valley with the Spanish Val d'Aran valley. Mountain biking and hang gliding are also popular in and around Luchon. The marker stands for a 9-hole golf course located close to the city center, being one of the oldest golf courses in France.