Trouville-sur-Mer (, literally ''Trouville on Sea''), commonly referred to as Trouville, is a
city
A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...
of 4,603 inhabitants in the
Calvados
Calvados (, , ) is a brandy from Normandy in France, made from apples or pears, or from apples with pears.
History In France
Apple orchards and brewers are mentioned as far back as the 8th century by Charlemagne. The first known record of Nor ...
Normandy
Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
region
In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and t ...
in northwestern
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
.
Trouville-sur-Mer borders
Deauville
Deauville () is a commune in the Calvados department, Normandy, northwestern France. Major attractions include its harbour, race course, marinas, conference centre, villas, Grand Casino, and sumptuous hotels. The first Deauville Asian Film Fes ...
across the
River Touques
The Touques () is a small coastal river in Pays d'Auge in Normandy, France. The Touques is officially navigable up to the Pont des Belges, from its estuary. Its source is in the Perche hills, south of Gacé. The river runs northwards, and flow ...
. This fishing-village on the English Channel became a popular tourist attraction (beach-resort and holiday-destination) in Normandy from the 19th century. Its long sandy beach earned then the nickname of "queen of the beaches" ("Reine des plages") or "most beautiful beach in the world".Août 1870 : Claude Monet pose son chevalet à Trouville… /ref>
The name of Trouville is frequently associated with the names of the numerous painters that visited it and painted there, especially during the second part of the XIXth century:
Claude Monet
Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...
,
Eugène Boudin
Eugène Louis Boudin (; 12 July 18248 August 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summa ...
,
Raoul Dufy
Raoul Dufy (; 3 June 1877 – 23 March 1953) was a French Fauvist painter. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramics and textile as well as decorative schemes for public buildings. He is noted ...
,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...
,
Gustave Caillebotte
Gustave Caillebotte (; 19 August 1848 – 21 February 1894) was a French painter who was a member and patron of the Impressionists, although he painted in a more realistic manner than many others in the group. Caillebotte was known for his early ...
, Fernand Léger, etc.
Trouville remains today a city of leisure and vacation with a casino and numerous festivals, as well as a city of culture (
Marcel Proust
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...
,
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film '' Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) e ...
,
Raymond Savignac
Raymond Savignac, often just abbreviated to "Savignac", was a French graphic artist famous for his commercial posters. He was born on November 6, 1907 in Paris, and died on October 30, 2002 in Trouville-sur-Mer (Calvados), aged 94. His work is d ...
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Charles Belmondo (; 9 April 19336 September 2021) was a French actor and producer. Initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s, he was a major French film star for several decades from the 1960s onward. His best known credits ...
,
Karl Zéro
Karl Zéro is the stage name of Marc Tellenne (born August 6, 1961 in Aix-les-Bains, Savoie), is a French writer, actor and filmmaker. Zéro is also a political talk show host/personality ('' Le Vrai Journal'') who has recorded albums of pop st ...
, etc.
Close to Paris and easily accessible by train, Trouville (as well as neighbouring Deauville) earned the nickname of 21st "
Arrondissements of Paris
The City of Paris is divided into twenty '' arrondissements municipaux'', administrative districts, more simply referred to as ''arrondissements'' (). These are not to be confused with departmental arrondissements, which subdivide the larger F ...
".
Gallery
File:Boudin, Eugène, The Beach at Trouville, 1865.jpg,
Eugène Boudin
Eugène Louis Boudin (; 12 July 18248 August 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, summa ...
, ''The Beach at Trouville'', 1865,
Princeton University Art Museum
The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 113,000 works o ...
File:Brooklyn Museum - The Beach at Trouville (Trouville, La Plage) - Eugène Louis Boudin - overall.jpg, Eugène Boudin, ''The Beach at Trouville (Trouville, La Plage)'',
Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...
Population
The town's inhabitants are called ''Trouvillais'' in French.
International relations
Trouville-sur-Mer is twinned with:
*
Barnstaple
Barnstaple ( or ) is a river-port town in North Devon, England, at the River Taw's lowest crossing point before the Bristol Channel. From the 14th century, it was licensed to export wool and won great wealth. Later it imported Irish wool, bu ...
,
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...
*
Vrchlabí
Vrchlabí (; german: Hohenelbe, la, Albipolis) is a town in Trutnov District in the Hradec Králové Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 12,000 inhabitants. It lies at the foot of the Giant Mountains on the river Elbe. The town centre with ...
,
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...