Every design for Bayonne

Bayonne was already the capital of Labourd in the early eleventh century, and in the twelfth century it spread across the Nive and built its first bridge over the Adour. Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage brought it under English rule and made it rich on the sea trade with England, until the French crown took it at the end of the Hundred Years' War.

The Château-Vieux still stands from those years, and La Citadelle and the fortifications of Vauban show how long the town had to defend itself; its last siege came in the Napoleonic wars. Sephardic families who settled in the Saint-Esprit quarter brought the skill that gave Bayonne its name for chocolate, and the Musée Basque et de l'histoire de Bayonne keeps the memory of a town that belongs to the Basque Country and to Gascony at once. The Musée Bonnat-Helleu, for its part, is filled with the portraits of Léon Bonnat.

People from Bayonne carry all of that with them: two rivers meeting in the middle of town, two languages on the street signs and a cup of thick chocolate on a cold morning.