La Grande Motte

Do you remember the board game Hotel? Those pyramids, those colourful towers at the water's edge. La Grande-Motte brings it straight to mind, like a Mediterranean version of Dubai's Palm Jumeirah, only built on a marsh. This land, once a natural area belonging to the commune of Mauguio, was almost uninhabited: a single farm, a marsh unfit for building, cut off by the étang de l'Or. The name comes from a five-metre dune, taller than the rest, beside which that farm had been built. An urban-planning UFO set down on the Occitanie coast between Montpellier and Aigues-Mortes. The architect Jean Balladur designed the whole thing in one piece, on a blank site: brutalism with an organic tinge, shapes that call up seashells and Mayan pyramids rather than housing blocks. Listed as "Patrimoine du XXe siècle" in 2010. Today: up to 120,000 people at the height of the season, for 8,500 year-round residents. One of the most over-visited towns in France relative to its population. Mass holidaymaking made concrete. But beyond the beach and the Mediterranean, La Grande-Motte is also a way into the Camargue, the Petite Camargue, with its lagoons, its flamingos, its light. The étangs de l'Or and du Ponant tie the resort to a wilder stretch of landscape, just behind those rounded white concrete façades.