The village’s Belle Époque villas, built when Parisian aristocracy and British tourists arrived each summer by the trainload, are still largely intact. Their timber-framed facades and steeply pitched roofs line the seafront in a state of elegant, salt-worn composure that feels less like preservation and more like the town simply never saw a reason to change.
And behind it all, the cliffs. Among the most extraordinary on the European Atlantic coast, and the reason everything else here exists. Étretat brings you the full picture: the golf course on the headland, one of the finest in France; the garden on the clifftop, quietly winning European design awards since 2019; and the coastline that stopped Claude Monet in his tracks for the better part of two decades. It is, by any honest measure, a destination that deserves considerably more attention than it currently receives.
The Coast That Stopped Monet in His Tracks
The cliffs are the reason everything else exists here. Three natural arches cut through ninety-metre chalk headlands, flanking a bay whose proportions are broad, contained and legible from the beach in a single glance, giving the landscape an almost theatrical quality. The Falaise d’Aval to the west carries the most famous arch, and beside it the Aiguille d’Étretat: a free-standing chalk needle rising from the sea, the kind of formation that looks implausible until you are standing directly in front of it. We were.
Claude Monet first came in 1864 and returned obsessively for two decades, producing more than fifty paintings of the same coastline. Different angles, different seasons, different weather, the same unresolved fascination. “I need two hands and hundreds of canvases at once,” he wrote to his partner Alice Hoschedé in October 1885. That same month, painting at the base of the Manneporte arch, a wave struck him, swept his canvas into the sea, and dragged him against the cliff. He was back at the same spot the following morning. The interpretive panels along the promenade mark the exact positions from which he worked, each printed with the painting it produced. Standing there, moving your eyes between the canvas and the cliff, you understand exactly what kept him coming back.
Golf d’Étretat: Eighteen Holes at the Edge
Golf d’Étretat sits fifty metres above the English Channel and has been ranked among the top 40 courses in Europe in 2025. Standing on the 10th fairway with the bay below you, that feels like an understatement. The course plays as a genuine test: narrow fairways, fast greens, a coastal wind that changes the club selection on every hole. The location is the spectacle, but the golf is the reason serious players come back.
We played it on a weekday morning in May, largely alone. The 10th hole is a par-5 that climbs toward the cliff edge before opening onto the full width of the bay. In calm conditions it is one of the finest holes on the continent. In wind, which at this elevation arrives without pattern, it is a different course entirely.
If you find yourself in Normandy, book via golfetretat.com and come early. The recently renovated clubhouse will meet all your expectations.
Les Jardins d’Étretat: Two Michelin Green Guide Stars
The gardens sit on the quieter eastern headland, less visited than the famous arch across the bay, which is precisely why they feel like a discovery. Russian landscape architect Alexandre Grivko transformed a derelict Belle Époque estate into seven thousand square metres of sculpted evergreen that won the European Garden Award in 2019, earned two Michelin Green Guide stars, and has been listed among the Great Gardens of the World.
What the photographs don’t convey is the full sensory register of the place. Shade between the clipped hedgerows, ambient music drifting softly along the garden paths, and beneath it all the constant sound of the sea below the cliff. It is as much an audio experience as a visual one.
The permanent sculptural centrepiece is Gouttes de Pluie (Drops of Rain), by Spanish artist Samuel Salcedo: a series of oversized human heads in polyester resin and aluminium, each frozen mid-expression, emerging from the sculpted greenery of the Jardin Émotions. Joy, fatigue, anticipation, pleasure. Up close they are stranger and more affecting than any photograph suggests. The garden has a way of doing that. We recommend to book your timed entry in advance at etretatgarden.fr.
Photos: Archive
