Bed and breakfast accommodation in Bayonne Monasteries

Bayonne has a secret charm of a fortified city. The picturesque and lively old Bayonne has a reputation for its particularly remarkable heritage, with the pretty tall houses with colourful shutters, huddled close together, are typical of the local architecture. 

Still in the old Bayonne, you can stroll through the city fortifications, and head to the botanical gardens, designed in a Japanese style, located within the ramparts and not far from Château-Vieux. The Château also known as the Old Castle of Bayonne, is a castle built in the late 11th century by the Viscounts of Labourd. 

Still in the town centre, you can visit the Museum of the Basque Country and the History of Bayonne, it features more than 2,000 objects and works of art on display, spread across twenty themed rooms. This museum is a must for those wishing to discover the Basque culture. 

A few blocks away, you can also visit the Bonnat-Helleu Museum, devoted to Fine Arts, whose collection includes works by Léon Bonnat, Paul Helleu, Peter Paul Rubens, Francisco Goya and Edgar Degas.

How to get around Bayonne?

You can get around the city easily by foot and explore its streets and town surroundings. You can easily get from place to place by foot as most tourist sites are located in the city centre. 

But Bayonne's tourist office lends out bikes for free (not overnight); you must leave ID as a deposit.

It also offers a free ferry shuttles across the River Adour between Boufflers and Bergeret. And if that doesn’t get you moving, there are also three free shuttle buses in the heart of the town. 

Travel 

The Basque Coast’s success as a destination makes it easy to get to by plane. The Biarritz- Pays Basque Airport, located at 15 mn of Bayonne, has several daily flights to and from Paris, other French cities, and abroad.
Several airlines fly there, including some low-cost airlines that fly non-stop to other cities in Europe.

Events

Bayonne’s Feria : Typical to this beautiful culture and region where identities start to blur, and Spanish and Basque traditional culture.

Each year, the festival lasts 5 days and always starts the Wednesday before the first Sunday of August. It is the largest festival in France.

The festivals include musical and street performances, traditional dances, parades, and fireworks.

Bayonne is a city in the Basque Country region of southwest France, where the Nive and Adour rivers meet. 

The city houses the Gothic-style Bayonne Cathedral in the heart of the historic centre of Bayonne, with its 13th-century cloister. The monument is an important french cathedral, because it is part of the historic pilgrimage path to Santiago de Compostela, it is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Pilgrims come in to see the shrine of St.Léon, the Bishop of Bayonne, who participated with converting the Basque Country in the 9th century.

The cloister of Bayonne Cathedral is from 1240 and warrants a separate entry, not least because it’s one of the largest in France. And unusually it was also at the centre of civic life in the middle ages: District assemblies and corporations would meet right here.

Not too far from Bayonne, the seaside town of Biarritz offers a beautiful scenery from the Virgin’s Rock. It was Napoleon III's idea to hollow out this rock, surrounded by a reef. It is now linked by a small iron footbridge, built by Gustav Eiffel in 1887. Legend has it that fishermen from the port of Biarritz were caught in a terrible storm while out at sea hunting whales. A divine light guided them back to port and the survivors erected a statue of the Virgin Mary in gratitude.