Coastal resorts and cultural exchange in Europe, 1780–18701

In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, seaside resorts across Europe developed as one of the most important novel forms of leisure, drawing heavily, like spas, on international capital, architectural styles and cultural tastes. However, only a few such places developed into the sort of seasonal gathering grounds for international elites that fostered cultural, political and diplomatic exchanges. Many coastal resorts catered mainly for less exalted markets, offering enclaves of cosmopolitanism embedded in more locally conventional cultures. In western and southern Europe, especially in France, some international resorts attracted a genuinely international elite drawn not only from the royal houses of Europe and the aristocracy but also the worlds of business and entertainment. In locations such as Biarritz, Nice, Deauville, as well as Ostend and San Sebastián, an intensely cosmopolitan but socially exclusive European leisure culture was forged in the later nineteenth century, although this homogenising tendency stood in a constant tension with diverging national and local cultural conventions. The growing convergence of transnational leisure culture appeared to have reached its limits.