Where to buy on the Opal Coast (Côte d’Opale): Le Touquet, Hardelot, Wissant and the Bay of the Somme

Why buy on the Opal Coast?

The name comes from a painter, Édouard Lévêque, who christened the coast in 1911 after the shifting, opalescent colours of its sea. People come for that light, for beaches that stretch for miles at low tide, for the dunes, the cliffs of the headlands and the pine forests planted to hold the sand. The resorts grew up between the 1850s and the 1930s: Anglo-Norman villas, Belle Époque façades, fishermen’s houses and a few modernist villas.

Buyers come from Paris, from Lille and its metropolitan area, from Belgium and from Britain, mostly for a second home; others settle year-round, in Wimereux, in Montreuil-sur-Mer or in the countryside behind the coast. In Le Touquet, second homes are a clear majority, and everywhere the finest houses tend to change hands between families, often without a listing. Our Opal Coast page presents the area.

How much does a house cost on the Opal Coast?

Sales published by the French tax authority (the DVF database) show a two-speed coast. In Le Touquet-Paris-Plage, the median price of houses sold over the 12 months to end of June 2026 reaches €8,900/m² and that of apartments €8,700/m², across 403 sales; across the Pas-de-Calais département as a whole, houses sell at a median of €1,700/m² and apartments at €2,200/m², over 16,308 sales.

For a house, the figure divides the total price, land included, by the built floor area: a villa on a large wooded plot pushes it up. No median gives the price of an address: the view, the distance to the beach, the condition of the building and the land make the difference. Home Select publishes its market benchmarks as open data.

Around Le Touquet, the same coast trades markedly lower, in Hardelot, Stella-Plage, Merlimont or Étaples: there you pay for the sea, without the prestige of the address.

Le Touquet-Paris-Plage: the forest, the seafront or the centre?

Founded in 1882 as Paris-Plage, in a pine forest planted on the dunes at the mouth of the Canche, the resort was adopted early by the British: P. G. Wodehouse lived there in the 1930s. Sea, forest, a town centre on foot and three golf courses: it is the deepest prestige market on the coast.

The forest and its villas

Under the pines, large Anglo-Norman, regional-style or modernist villas stand on wooded plots, along quiet streets close to the beach: the heart of the resort’s prestige, and a narrow market in which the finest houses often sell between families. To check: roof and woodwork, damp in a house shut up for the winter, the health of the pines, and what the local plan allows for an extension or a pool. More on buying a villa in Le Touquet.

The seafront and the centre

Along the seafront promenade, apartment buildings face the sea: holiday flats whose value rests on an open view, the floor and the condition of the building against the salt air. Around rue Saint-Jean, the centre gathers shops, restaurants and the market: town villas and apartments for doing everything without a car, summer evening bustle included.

The golf courses and the Canche bay

To the south, the Avenue du Golf serves three courses, La Mer, a links, La Forêt and the nine-hole Le Manoir, in a quiet quarter about three kilometres from the centre. To the north, the Canche bay opens onto an estuary facing Étaples, where the maritime public domain and the Loi Littoral, France’s coastal law, decide what can be built. For houses, eight sales in ten closed between €5,400/m² and €12,800/m²: more on our page about buying a house in Le Touquet.

Hardelot, Stella-Plage, Merlimont: the same sea on a gentler budget?

North of Le Touquet, Hardelot, in the commune of Neufchâtel-Hardelot, is a resort founded in the early twentieth century by a British developer, John Whitley. Its villas hide in the pines between the beach and two golf courses; close by, the Château d’Hardelot, in neighbouring Condette, houses a cultural centre devoted to the Entente Cordiale. Buyers come for the family villa under the trees, in a more residential mood than Le Touquet.

South of the Canche, Stella-Plage, part of the commune of Cucq, and then Merlimont line up villas and holiday houses in the dunes and pines, around family beaches; further south, Berck-sur-Mer lives all year round. These places offer the same coast at markedly lower values: if the sea and the calm matter more than the address, the same budget often buys more space or more land.

Wimereux, Ambleteuse, Wissant: buying on the headland coast

North of Boulogne-sur-Mer, the coast changes character: cliffs, headlands and wide, wild bays. Wimereux lines its seafront with Belle Époque villas and keeps a year-round life; Ambleteuse keeps its Vauban fort standing on the beach; Audresselles keeps its fishermen’s houses. Further north, Wissant opens onto a broad bay between Cap Gris-Nez, the point of the French coast closest to England, and Cap Blanc-Nez.

This landscape is protected: the two headlands form the Deux-Caps Grand Site de France, and many plots lie within listed sites or belong to the Conservatoire du Littoral, the public coastal land trust. Existing houses are scarce and much sought after, and the rights to build or extend are tightly controlled: read the plot and the planning rules before the house.

• In Wimereux: seafront villas and town houses, within walking distance of the shops and the beach.
• In Ambleteuse and Audresselles: village and fishermen’s houses, often small, to be restored with care.
• In Wissant and on the heights of the headlands: family houses with views over the bay, restored farmhouses.
• Everywhere: a narrow market, where a fine house is decided quickly and is often found through the network.

Montreuil-sur-Mer and the Canche valley: living inland?

Some twenty minutes from Le Touquet, Montreuil-sur-Mer looks down on the Canche valley from its ramparts. Victor Hugo set part of Les Misérables here, and the British Army had its general headquarters in the town during the First World War. It offers large period houses, grand town residences and stone and brick town houses, with a small-town life all year round.

Around it, the valley villages offer country houses, farmhouses and estates set in meadows, at gentler prices than on the coast: the choice of families who want space, horses or a large garden. Our guide to buying a character home explains what to look for in an old building.