Thermes de Royan

Thermes de Royan draws iodine-rich Atlantic sea water in the thalassotherapy facilities of Royan, the grande dame of the Charente-Maritime coast at the mouth of the Gironde estuary, a seaside resort that was almost entirely rebuilt after the Allied bombardment of January 1945 and has since become an outstanding example of mid-twentieth-century French modernist architecture. The rebuilt city centre, designed in a style that fuses Atlantic deco curves with Le Corbusier-influenced concrete rationalism, culminates in Notre-Dame de Royan, the concrete parish church designed by Guillaume Gillet in 1958 whose soaring parabolic interior is considered one of the masterpieces of French ecclesiastical modernism of the twentieth century. The Atlantic thalassotherapy of Royan, using the iodine-rich and mineral-dense waters of the Gironde mouth where freshwater and saltwater mix in a biologically productive estuary, is practised in a city whose architectural rebirth is as remarkable as any war reconstruction story in France.