Pau: Holiday apartments and houses

The Château de Pau is considered the birthplace of Henri IV and is now a national museum and state-owned national estate with rich 19th-century decorative furnishings and an extensive Henri IV collection.

The Château de Pau is located in the city’s historic district and can be reached on foot from the SNCF railway station in just a few minutes. Personal travel planning may include the wish to rent a holiday apartment in Pau.

Culture

Built around 1730, the Maison Balagué, the birthplace of Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, has been converted into the Musée Bernadotte, which traces his rise through paintings, sculptures and objects. The Maison Balagué is also a well-preserved example of 18th-century Béarnese urban architecture: it was built from pebbles, bricks and dressed stone and has a wooden gallery overlooking the courtyard.

The Musée des Beaux-Arts houses works from Flemish, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and French schools of art dating from the 15th to the 20th century. The museum offers guided tours of its permanent exhibitions throughout the year. There are also expert-led introductions to artistic techniques such as watercolour, engraving and cyanotype.

Coins were minted in the Tour de la Monnaie until the French Revolution; on the reverse, the coins bore Béarnese Vaquetas, or “cow figures”. The Château de Pau and its park illustrate nine centuries of Pau’s eventful history. This period is also conveyed by the guided city tour “Pau, capitale royale”.

Cityscape and routes

The Pau funicular continues to carry passengers arriving from the railway station and is free for all passengers. The “Balade à Roulettes n°9: Le tour du château de Pau” is accessible to pushchairs and wheelchair users thanks to the funicular and the lift in the Tour de la Monnaie.

Nature and landscape

The Forêt de Bastard is an almost 300-hectare state forest in the Lande du Pont Long and offers a wide variety of circular trails. The “Balade à Roulettes n°38: La forêt de Bastard” is a 2.3-kilometre circular route starting in Pau.

The Boulevard des Pyrénées offers views of the Pyrenees mountain range. Parc Beaumont was created after the city of Pau bought the villa and its park from the Comtesse de Noailles in 1876; the former private garden was redesigned as a public park by Henri Martinet at the end of the 19th century. Pau’s landscape has been protected since 1944 under the designation “Horizons Palois”.

Regional products

The Halles de Pau have a producers’ area offering fresh vegetables, sheep’s cheese, honey and eggs from Béarn. Products from Béarn, including Béarnaise andouille, can be sampled there on site.

More local pages: Osse-En-Aspe, Morlaàs, Lurbe-Saint-Christau, Auterrive, Viven, Lescar, Urdos, Méracq.

Back to the higher-level travel overview: Pyrenees-Atlantiques.