Plan your visit
La Dune du Pilat is one of France’s great natural sites — bring good shoes and a camera. Locate it on the map, book a room nearby in a click, or add it to your travel list to build your itinerary.
About La Dune du Pilat
On the Atlantic coast near Arcachon, the Dune du Pilat is the tallest sand dune in Europe — a colossal mountain of pale sand rising over a hundred metres above the sea, stretching nearly three kilometres along the shore and constantly shifting inland on the wind. From its wind-rippled crest, reached by a stairway or a breathless scramble up the slope, an extraordinary panorama unfolds: on one side the dark pine forest of the Landes, on the other the shining Atlantic, the sandbanks of the Arcachon basin and the Banc d'Arguin. Paragliders launch from its heights, and the dune glows gold and rose at sunset. Vast, sublime and ever-changing, the Dune du Pilat is one of the great natural wonders of France — a slice of desert poised between forest and ocean.