Dinard is a commune in the Ille-et-Vilaine department in Brittany in
north-western France.
It is a famous seaside resort, especially
with the British and Americans, for its Belle Époque villas and the
British Film Festival which has been held there every year since 1989.
With its many classified villas dating from the 1900s and 1910s, its
casino and its cultural activities, it is considered one of the most
prestigious seaside resorts in France, which displayed at the end of the
2010s, one of the highest tourist attendance among French cities with a
thousand to ten thousand inhabitants, according to a study.
The
official name of the municipality was successively Saint-Enogat (until
1879), Dinard-Saint-Enogat (from 1879 to 1921) and Dinard (since 1921).
In 2021, with 10,219 inhabitants, it is the 11th most populous
municipality in Ille-et-Vilaine and the 37th in Brittany.
The town is home to six historical
monuments and 146 inventoried buildings:
The
fourteenth-century knights of the knights Ollivier and Geoffroy de
Montfort: they are located in the chapel of the former priory which
is located near the Priory beach. They were registered by decree of
December 4, 1942.
The so-called Black Prince house, also built in
the fourteenth century, listed by decree of December 15, 1926.
The manor of the Baronnais, of Breton Renaissance style with its
French gardens, was built in 1647. It is registered by decree of
June 28, 1972.
The fort on Harbor Island, a former redoubt
fortified by Siméon Garangeau in 1689, classified by decree of June
4, 1952.
The villa Les Roches Brunes, built in 1893, registered
by decree of June 23, 2014.
Villa Greystones, built in 1938 by
Michel Roux-Spitz, listed by decree of July 4, 2014.
The tennis
club, one of the first to be built in France (in 1879), registered
by decree of April 18, 1994. This registration was canceled by a
judgment of the administrative court of Rennes, January 26, 1995
Certain sectors of Dinard are covered by a
ZPPAUP instituted by a prefectural decree of July 13, 2000. In this
context, 407 villas and hotels dating from the Belle Époque and the
Art Deco period, the casino and the old center of Saint- Enogat.
The Dinard marine biology station includes the Cresco (Center for
Research and Education on Coastal Systems), research establishments
belonging to the National Museum of Natural History. At the former
address of this marine biology station was the “Dinard Sea Aquarium
and Museum”, closed in 1996 and transformed since 2015 into a luxury
hotel. It included presentations of the expeditions of marine and
polar explorer Jean-Baptiste Charcot, sets by Lyona Faber and Robert
Hamilton and a sculpture by Gaston Guitton, Eve Tempted by the
Snake, installed outside. The marine biology station of Dinard and
the Cresco, meanwhile moved to the rue du Port-Blanc, are still in
operation and continue their research in marine biology on behalf of
the National Museum of Natural History.
The murals of CREPS
Bretagne-Dinard, Dinard's sports resource, expertise and performance
center, produced in 1966 by the painter Geoffroy Dauvergne
(1922-1977) as part of the 1% artistic program. Only one remains in
the entrance hall: L'Amour à la Mandoline. One is kept at the COSEC
in Dinard: Les Sirènes, another at the Espace Delta in Pleurtuit: Le
Messager Secret, and a third, Le Port, oil on mounted canvas, will
be kept at the Saint-Malo maritime museum.
Fresco by the painter
Henri Marret, made in 1926, at the Le Bras tea room (now missing).
Fresco painted by Geoffroy Dauvergne in a villa at Pointe de la
Malouine and representing the arrival of Caravelles in Saint-Malo80.
Fresco painted between 1946 and 1950 at the Villa Greystones, by the
architect Michel Roux-Spitz (1888-1957), by the painter Louis
Bouquet (1885-1952): Le Voyage de l'Homme en blanc.
Dinard is the
first seaside resort in France to safeguard its architectural
heritage from the end of the 19th century by classifying 407 villas
and buildings.
The City of Dinard, Place Yves-Verney, has a
monument to Yves Verney, mayor of Dinard (1953-1952), made by the
sculptor Georges Delahaie, also author of a high relief in copper at
the city's hotel school.
Villa Eugénie was built in 1868,
according to the plans of the architect Jean Pichot. It was
bequeathed in 1873 to the town of Dinard which first made it its
town hall and then twenty years later its police station. After the
Second World War, it became a primary school, between 1967 and 1985,
a library and finally from 1985 until it closed in 2004. Today in
ruins, the villa is nothing more than an empty shell. , its
interiors are too damaged to allow an activity to be set up.
By plane
Saint-Malo-Dinard-Pleurtuit Airport (IATA: DNR, OACI:
LFRD) at Pleurtuit and Saint-Lunaire (5 km south-southwest of Dinard
and 8 km southwest of Saint-Malo), +33 2 99 46 18 46 - Flight to and
from London.
The old attested forms are: Dinart (1210), Dynart (1256), Dinart
(sixteenth century), Port Dinart (1630).
The first part of the
toponym of Dinard comes from the Brittonic word din (hill,
fortification). According to the popular etymology used to justify the
legendary aspect of the origin of the name of the city, the second part
of the name comes from Arz (bear, king of animals throughout medieval
Europe) or Art (Arthur). In reality the second part of the toponym comes
from the Celtic ard, arz, "high", Dinard meaning "high hill".
In
current Breton Dinard is called Dinarzh42, using the etymology "bear
fort".
The gentleman is from Dinard.
The history of Dinard is linked to the legend of King Arthur: indeed,
according to legend, King Arthur would have landed on the Dinard coast
in 513 to build a fort there (hence the alleged etymology of the city,
Arthur's fort) and found the locality of Dinard.
During the
Middle Ages, Dinard was only a very modest fishing port and fishing
village on the outskirts of Saint-Enogat, a much more important town,
including a church and a cemetery, and the capital of the town of
Dinard. This parish is dedicated to Saint Enogat, whose tradition makes
him the fifth bishop of Aleth.
Around 1200-1210, Roland 1st of
Dinan detached the seigneury of Saint-Enogat from the Viscount of
Poudouvre, which he owned. He offers this lordship as well as that of
Plancoët to his sister Marguerite de Dinan.
According to Abbot
Mathurin (who wrote a history of Saint-Enogat in 1898), Olivier and
Geoffroi de Montfort founded the church of Saint-Jacques and
Saint-Philippe, formerly named the Bechet Hospital for Mathurine
religious, in recognition of the fact that they had been redeemed from
the hands of Infidels by religious of this Order. However, the Geoffrey
and Olivier who founded the priory, in 1324, probably did not
participate in the crusades (the death of Louis IX, in 1270, marks the
end of the 8th and last crusade), nor, consequently, were taken prisoner
by the Barbarians.
Duke John IV of Brittany landed from England
on August 3, 1379. One of the most famous songs of the Barzaz Breiz, An
alarc'h ("The Swan"), restores this landing in Dinard which marks the
beginning of the reconquest of Brittany, after the attempt to confiscate
the duchy by the King of France Charles V.
Around 1200-1210, there is an alms port in Dynart (Dinard) allowing pilgrims to cross the Rance. This crossing point is attached to a charitable establishment called the Bechet Hospital and probably controlled by the Hospitallers of the Order of Saint-Jean de Jérusalem or by the Templars installed in Saint-Malo, from 1140.
Jean-Baptiste Ogée described Saint-Enogat in this way in 1778 :
"Saint-Enogat; three-quarters of a league west-southwest of Saint-Malo,
its bishopric, 14 leagues from Rennes and 4 leagues from Dinan, its
subdelegation and its spring. There are 1,400 communicants there. The
cure is at the alternative. The territory, bounded to the north and east
by the sea, is of a flat area, and well cultivated. Half a league south
of its bell tower begins a moor that extends more than 2 leagues towards
Dinan. »
After the end of the Terror, the population of the
commune is in favor of the changes brought about by the French
Revolution. The main revolutionary festival is that celebrating the
anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI, accompanied by an oath of
hatred to royalty and anarchy, celebrated from 1795.
Saint-Enogat and Dinard in the first half of the nineteenth century
At the beginning of the nineteenth century Dinard is still only a small
fishing village located in the town of Saint-Enogat. Its location in
front of Saint-Malo, however, makes it a place of passage for sailors
and goods that embark from the corsair city. We also meet some British
people there, most often former prisoners of the revolutionary and
imperial wars.
Around 1840, Alpyn Thomson was the first English
consul to settle in Dinard; John Sedgwitch succeeded him, then Robert
Monteith, who lived in Dinard priory in 1850.
A. Marteville and
P. Varin, continuators of Ogée, thus describe Saint-Enogat in 1843 :
"Saint-Enogat (under the invocation of Saint Enogat, bishop of Aleth,
celebrated on January 13): municipality formed by the former parish of
this name, today branch; capital of collection; registration office in
Dinard. (...) Main villages: Saint-Alexandre, La Vallée, Dinard, La
Haute and la Basse-Guais. Main houses: the Viscountcy, the Baronnais,
the Belle-Issue. Total area: 785 hectares of which (...) ploughable land
576 ha, meadows and pastures 18 ha, woods 3 ha, orchards and gardens 24
ha, moors or uncultivated 90 ha (...). Mills: 3 (Perdriel, Baronnais,
Rock, wind). The most important point of this municipality is the
village of Dinard, which seems to be one with that of the Valley. This
small port, recently improved by major works, is the obligatory passage
of everything that comes to Saint-Malo, passengers or food, by the left
bank of the Rance. Boats, mounted by three or four crewmen, are
constantly busy making the crossing from Dinard to Saint-Malo, and vice
versa, for the modest contribution of 5 cents. There has been talk, for
some time, of replacing them with a small steamer. We doubt that this
boat could do the service at such a reduced price; however, for most
passengers, time is less precious than money. Dinard is also the arrival
point of the road from Lamballe to Saint-Malo, which partly crosses the
town to the southeast, and then crosses it from south to north. Geology:
granite terrain. We speak French. »
One of the first discoverers of the resort is William Faber, an
American aristocrat who used to stay in Dinan. He falls in love with the
panorama of the coast and decides to settle there. He built houses on
the Pointe du Moulinet, the "small terraces", which he sold to his
English-speaking friends from Dinan: this is the origin of the British
colony in Dinard.
When William Faber died prematurely (at the age
of less than 50) in 1854, it was his wife Lyona Faber who took over: she
started real estate development and continued to sell, in the same way,
housing estates to their Dinanese friends. She donated a plot of land
from Pointe du Moulinet for the construction of the Anglican church of
Saint-Bartholomew.
In 1858, the first seaside villa was built by
James Erhart Coppinger at the Pointe du Moulinet, it is the Château du
Bec de la Vallée, or Villa Castel Mond (because it belonged for a time
to Sir Robert Mond and his wife Lady Mond). In the same year, a sea
bathing establishment was built on the beach of the Lock, at the time
Elegant beach, with bathing cabins on wooden stilts: it is this fashion
of sea bathing, born in England for its supposed therapeutic virtues,
which will truly launch Dinard and consecrate it as an international
seaside resort. The beach then becomes a space of contemplation and
leisure, whereas it was once only a laborious, very wild and
inhospitable space.
Then, the construction of seaside villas
became widespread: in 1860, Lyona Faber built the villa
Sainte-Catherine, now disappeared, followed by the villa Napoli, ordered
by M. de Francesco. In 1865, Lyona Faber built the Bric-a-Brac villa,
facing the Priory Bay. Its owner, Robert Hamilton, would have named it
so because of its improbable architecture. After 1865, the constructions
follow one another, it is still for the most part villas, with
completely crazy and free architecture, all of extremely varied styles.
Auguste Poussineau arranges and subdivides the point of the Falouine,
Albert Lacroix launches the series of villas of Saint-Enogat. Count
Joseph Rochaïd-Dahdad, a Lebanese, settled in Dinard in 1873; having a
considerable fortune, he invested his money in Dinard: he built his
Château des Deux-Rives, on the Pointe du Moulinet, drilled streets and
boulevards, ordered the construction of the Halles de la Concorde, in
the Valley district, and the Dinard train station (he is considered the
main founder of the seaside resort) ; his two sons continued their
father's work.
The creation of a line of steamboats, the Jersey
Steam Packet Company, the emerging fashion for sea bathing and the
arrival of the train in Saint-Malo in 1864 caused the development of the
seaside resort at the end of the Second Empire; the last decades of the
century saw the multiplication of villas and cottages; a hotel boom also
developed, with in particular the Crystal hotel; English banks,
Protestant temples, tennis and golf clubs, a select club, the Dinard
Club were created and regattas were organized.
Contrary to a
stubborn legend dating back to the late nineteenth century, the Emperor
Napoleon III and his wife Eugenie never planned to come and stay in
Dinard during the summer of 1868. No document allows to corroborate the
thesis of a planned visit then canceled at the last moment for a futile
and not very credible reason: the presence alongside the empress of a
bichon dog that the emperor would not have wanted to bring with them.
Neither the press of the time nor the Memoirs of contemporaries mention,
moreover, the preparations for this supposed missed appointment. On the
other hand, the time diaries keep precise track of the imperial couple's
movements during the summer of 1868: Fontainebleau, Plombières, the
Châlons camp and Biarritz are the only places included in the program.
Built by the architect Jean Pichot, the Dinard villa named Eugenie
therefore has only the first name of the sovereign as an imperial. It
recalls a simple Dinard hope: to welcome the emperor and the empress.
The prefect of Ille-et-Vilaine Paul Féart also did not have it built
since he left the department in 1864 to take up his duties in the
Lot-et-Garonne where he died in 1867. The villa will belong to Pierre
Levavasseur, who will bequeath it to the city on his death. The villa
Eugenie will be for a time town hall of Dinard, municipal library then
museum of the seaside site until 2004.
In 1889, Benjamin Girard described Dinard in these terms :
"Dinard
owes to its exceptional location and its magnificent beaches, as much as
to its beautiful cliffs, the aristocratic vogue that has made it an
outstanding seaside resort. Built in an amphitheater, on a bay, between
the Tip of the Viscounté and the promontory known as the Bec de la
Vallée, the city consists, in a way, only of luxurious pleasure houses,
charming villas and beautiful hotels. A splendid casino adorns the main
beach where renowned horse races take place every year. (...) On the Tip
of the Décolleté rises a semaphore (...). The Central Society for the
rescue of shipwrecked people created, in 1878, a lifeboat station in
Dinard (...). »
In the 1880s, Dinard is the first seaside resort
in France, it is at its golden age. Nicknamed "the Dinard of a hundred
Hotels" and "the Pearl of the Emerald Coast", Dinard brings together the
aristocracy, political personalities and intellectuals from all over the
continent who no longer stay only in their private villas and frequent
the most luxurious hotels: Albert I, Raymond Poincaré, Agatha Christie,
Victor Hugo, Edward VII, George V, Winston Churchill, Judith Gautier,
Jacqueline Kennedy, Lawrence of Arabia (in his childhood), Edmond
Rostand, Paul Valery spent holidays in Dinard. It is a cosmopolitan
population that mixes with the early English colony.
Pablo
Picasso paints his series of paintings The Bathers in Dinard, inspired
by the nudity of bathers less and less hidden. The benefactors of the
city are multiplying: in addition to the first real estate developers,
we can count Paul Féart, Pierre Levavasseur, Jean Pichot57 ... Mrs
Hughes Hallett, a native of Philadelphia, nicknamed "the Queen of
Dinard", is the symbol of social life at the height of the city: every
evening, she organizes lavish balls and receptions that bring together
all the "good society" of Dinard to party all night, in the villa
Monplaisir (today the city hall). Luxurious villas and hotels, intended
for the elitist and aristocratic population who frequent Dinard,
flourish throughout the city. Science, the sea and adventure are also
not forgotten, with the opening in 1935 of the "Aquarium and Museum of
the Sea" wanted by the famous Commander Charcot. But above all, Dinard
is at the forefront of modernity: running water, electricity and
telephone lines are a very rare comfort for the time.
To adapt to
the growing influx of tourists, the Bec de la Vallée pier and the Yacht
club are being developed, then the Clair de lune promenade, which
replaces the old suspended and unsafe footbridge.
At the end of
the nineteenth century Dinard is one of the most modern cities in
France. The British presence can be seen through the villas with
bow-windows, parks and English gardens, the opening of a Protestant
temple in 1871, a tennis club in 1879, the casino, the Dinard-Pleurtuit
racecourse in 1885, the golf course (its course is in the neighboring
town of Saint-Briac) in 1887, the hospital "Providence" in 1891.
The fallen dreams of the Viscountcy and the decline of Dinard
From
the beginning of the twentieth century, the public limited company of La
Vicomté-en-Dinard brings together architects, industrialists and
entrepreneurs and Parisian real estate developers with a project: the
creation of the new district of La Vicomté as a new fashionable center
in Dinard. At the head of the queue, the architects Victor Lesage and
Charles Miltgen are drawing up plans and imagining this new worldly
resort district and its casino, public garden, shopping center, tennis
courts, villas and hotel palaces. With the funds of the company, the
Vicomté casino and the Beauvallon hotel were built. But, very quickly,
the economic crisis of 1929 cut off the capital and the hopes of the
far-reaching and ambitious project of the Viscount in Dinard: the casino
was destroyed, and the Beauvallon hotel was transformed into a
condominium. The other hotels, the villas and the shopping center will
remain in the form of a plan.
If the dream of the housing estate of the Viscounté does not come
true, Dinard will be with Biarritz one of the only two French resorts
that will largely renew their bathing facilities during the period that
we will describe as the Roaring Twenties. The Great War will indeed see
the disappearance of a certain conception of high society which, by its
lifestyle and its tastes, constituted an extension of that of the
eighteenth century or at least imitated it. For her, seaside life is
only the transposition of social events (formal dinners, teas, balls of
all kinds, concerts, clubs, hunting, horse races, etc.) from cities and
castles to the countryside, by the sea. The latter has only a role of
"pictorial nature" that we contemplate as a painting sheltered from the
bowwindow of the living room with dark wood paneling and upholstered
furniture of his villa or his terrace, but without entering or very
little in contact with it. Apart from some social regattas where
imperial, royal and grand ducal yachts meet, the essentials are not
there for this company.
A "new big world" loving modernity,
speed, sport, jazz. will replace this society with "aristocratic" tastes
and upset the codes. Social life will now take place around the beach
and its activities. The sea and outdoor life will become the pretext for
this. However, the bathing facilities of Dinard date for the most part
from the beginning of the twentieth century (casino, hotels) and no
longer meet the tastes of this new society. Jean Hennessy, who owns a
very important property in Dinard, will then create an investment
company, the Lock company, whose purpose is to renew the bathing
facilities of the resort. His first and only realization that he will
entrust to his architect Marcel Oudin will be, in 1927, a new hotel, the
"Gallic Hotel", located on the outskirts of the grande plage, at 2
boulevard Féart. Manifesto of a measured art deco, this vast and
luxurious hotel with a stepped facade where Pablo Picasso will stay
twice, will present all the comforts sought by the new clientele. Its
100 bathrooms for 150 rooms (the average being one bathroom for 10 rooms
in establishments of the same standing at the time in Dinard), its
central heating, its multiple elevators will ensure a great success from
the first years of its operation. The opening of this establishment will
have a very important impact on the Dinard hotel world which will in
turn seek to get "up to date". Many of the transformations of the
existing establishments will then be entrusted to the same Marcel Oudin,
renowned Parisian architect, who owns a villa in the "Trickery", will
become one of the main artisans of the transformation of the seaside
Dinard. He will realize, among other things, the club house of the
"Dinard Golf", the modernization of the hotels "de la Mer" and
"Michelet" for the Legendre family, the "Rotunda" of the "Panorama", the
bar "La Potinière" rue du Casino, the dancing "Le Casanova", boulevard
Féart. He will draw the plans for the new pier of the company of the
"Green Vedettes" as well as the first unrealized bridge project over the
Rance estuary at the height of the Viscounté district. However, his
project of a "Thermal palace-swimming pool" on the seawall of the beach
of the Lock will not be retained by the city of Dinard which will prefer
that of the architect Max Fournier who will realize the casino Balnéum.
The period between the two world wars therefore presents Dinard with
a positive balance sheet. This period, we forget it too often, was its
second golden age thanks to visionary businessmen like Jean Hennessy.
External events such as the crisis of 1929, or the Second World War will
not make it possible to reap the fruits of this mutation in the short
term. However, unlike some other resorts in the English Channel that
will freeze in the previous century and quickly disappear, Dinard by
turning to the future during the 1920s, will promote a seaside lifestyle
that is roughly the one we know today and thus ensure its future.
From the 1930s, however, Dinard will begin its decline as a social
resort: the British gradually stop coming there, and suddenly it is all
the rich aristocracy who desert it. To its windy climate, we prefer the
French Riviera, more fashionable and more appreciated for its
Mediterranean climate. The city gradually falls into oblivion, only the
villas resist.
The monument to the dead of Dinard bears the names of 346 sailors and
soldiers who died for France during the First World War; 100 of them are
also inscribed on a commemorative plaque located in the parish church of
Saint-Enogat, 174 of them on a commemorative plaque located in the
church of Notre-Dame and 4 of them on another plaque located in the
Protestant temple. 83 soldiers, including an anonymous one, are buried
in the military square of the communal cemetery, as well as another
soldier, Henri Lodin, who died for France in Marrakech (Morocco) on
December 5, 1933.
41 Belgian soldiers, who died at the
complementary hospital No. 64 located in Dinard, are buried in the
military square of the Dinard cemetery.
The Second World War definitely sounded the death knell of Dinard
seaside resort with international fame. On March 14, 1941, Mayor Émile
Bara was sentenced to six months in prison by the Rennes war council for
hiding weapons. Kept incommunicado for two months, he is exiled to Exmet
in the Dordogne. The prefect Rippert appoints Arsène Jeanne as the new
mayor on March 22, 1941. On the night of August 5 to 6, 1944, about
twenty people, including the mayor of the city, a police commissioner
and part of the city council, were arrested by the Germans and taken as
hostages to the Kommandantur. Released for the most part, Mayor Arsène
Jeanne and Georges Rio will join the hostages of barracks 14 at Camp
Margueritte in Rennes.
The monument to the dead of Dinard bears
the names of 58 people who died for France during the Second World War;
a list of 25 people deported to concentration camps in Germany with ties
to Dinard is available on a website.
The military square of the
Dinard cemetery houses the graves of 63 British sailors and soldiers who
died during the Second World War, in particular those of 50 sailors
members of the crew of the cruiser HMS Charybdis sunk by a German
torpedo boat on October 23, 1943 off Perros-Guirec.
Yves Verney is the first mayor to rebuild the city, a wave of
improvements and rehabilitations tries to adapt Dinard to mass tourism
and to give it dynamism again: this sometimes involves the necessary
destruction of existing architectural elements, as for the construction
of the Palais des congrès, future palace of Arts and Festival, and its
Olympic swimming pool (1967), then the Crystal Hotel. After the death
during Yves Verney's mandate, Yvon Bourges, mayor from 1962 to 1989,
opens a new page and continues the renovation of Dinard: Hotel des
Postes (1963), the seafront, the Saint-Alexandre district equipped with
a social center and the construction of residential subdivisions, an
industrial and craft area (from 1971), a sports complex (COSEC) in 1978,
an equestrian center of international level in Val Porée (from 1972) ,
the Yvon-Bourges hotel school (1973), the creation of an Architectural,
Urban and Landscape Heritage Protection Zone (ZZPAUP), voted on April
20, 1984 and promoting the heritage of the city, with the classification
of the villas carried out by the mayor Marius Mallet, who will create
the British Film Festival in 1989 and will continue the development of
the place Crolard / Rochaïd with the construction of the new Halls.
Since the 2000s, the town hall has been betting a lot on culture (City
of Art and History label), with two contemporary exhibitions every
summer (one at the villa Roches Brunes and the other at the Palais des
Arts), an educational exhibition in winter and numerous festivals
(British film, young fashion designers, the Summer laughter, the German
Cinema Week ...).
Six soldiers from Dinard died for France during
the Indochina War and seven during the Algerian War.
The seaside resort of Dinard is located on the Emerald Coast, near
the border with the Côtes-d'Armor and the city of Saint-Malo (where the
Rance makes the separation). This is the Rance tidal power plant,
located in the town of Richardais, a technological feat of the 1960s and
a tourist hotspot, which connects Dinard and Saint-Malo.
In the
old subdivision of the bishopric of Saint-Malo, before the creation of
the departments, the city was part of the country of Poudouvre. When the
departments were created, the city of Saint-Malo, which wanted a
department around it, did not win the case. In compensation, while the
mouth of the Rance separates the route of the departments of
Ille-et-Vilaine and Côtes-d'Armor (Côtes-du-Nord at the time), an
enclave on the west bank including Dinard and the neighboring
municipalities (Pleurtuit, La Richardais, Saint-Lunaire, Le
Minihic-sur-Rance and Saint-Briac-sur-Mer) was attached to
Ille-et-Vilaine. Dinard is the center of the fourth agglomeration of the
department, which brings together 21,401 inhabitants in 1999 with
Pleurtuit, Saint-Lunaire, La Richardais, Saint-Briac-sur-Mer and 25,006
inhabitants with the Côtes-d'Armor part (Lancieux and Ploubalay).
Not far away are the Channel Islands accessible in an hour by
high-speed ship from Saint-Malo or 15 minutes by plane from
Saint-Malo-Dinard-Pleurtuit airport.
The four main beaches of the
city are the beaches of the Priory, the Lock, Saint-Enogat and
Port-Blanc. There are other beaches, unsupervised and smaller,
accessible by the coastal path that connects the Priory to Port Blanc
(beaches of La Malouine, Port-Riou, Notre-Dame-du-Roc).
Dinard is located in the middle part of the north Armorican domain, a
geological unit of the Armorican Massif which is the result of three
successive mountain ranges. The Dinard geological site is located more
precisely in an essentially Brioverian sedimentary basin limited to the
south by an important Cadomian granite massif, the Lanhélin pluton which
is part of a larger group, the Mancellian batholith.
The
geological history of the region is marked by the Cadomian cycle
(between 750 and 540 Ma) which results in the over-formation of the
Cadomian chain which was supposed to culminate at about 4,000 m. At the
end of the Upper Precambrian, the surrounding Brioverian sediments are
strongly deformed, folded and metamorphosed by the Cadomian orogeny
which implies a strong crustal thickening, essentially forming schists
and gneiss. This deformation develops a succession of antiforms
(Saint-Jacut-Rothéneuf, le Minihic and Plouër-sur-Rance) corresponding
to overlaps with south-east convergence, separated by synforms (la
Richardais and Saint-Suliac) of orientation N60 °, folds all the more
spilled to the South as we approach the migmatitic core. This
elliptical-shaped core (25 × 6 km), surrounded by a gneissic and
mica-schist envelope, corresponds to the Dinard-Saint-Malo region. The
thickening, following the tectonic scaling of the orogenic domain, has
indeed caused the crustal fusion at the origin of the establishment of
the anatectic domes (migmatites of Guingamp and Saint-Malo, developed at
the expense of the Brioverian sediments) which is dated between 560 and
540 Ma. The granitic massifs of the Mancellian seal the end of the
ductile deformation of the Cadomian orogeny. The arenization of these
rocks probably began in the Pliocene, under the action of warm and humid
temperate climates, and is still continuing today but in attenuated
form, especially during the influx of water at the beginning of cold
periods. This state of alteration, which is clearly visible in the low
cliffs, is also found in fault zones where the substratum is crushed and
altered with the presence of breaches locally. Finally, in the
Plio-Quaternary, the rocks of the substratum are locally covered by
recent deposits resulting from the action of the wind (pockets or
veneers of silty materials locally present at the top of the cliff).
Designed in the 1930s from the Priory beach to the pier at the Bec
de la Vallée cove to the north, the concrete path of the Clair-de-Lune
Promenade testifies to the municipality's desire to compete with the
Côte d'Azur. It makes it possible to observe the different facies of the
migmatites of Saint-Malo (intermediate between the original gneiss and
the anatexian granite). These banded migmatites consist of an
alternation of isotropic leukosomes and melanosomes which strongly
emphasize the foliation sloping here towards the N-NE. This banding is
sometimes intersected by pegmatitic veins (characterized by the
abundance of black tourmaline and green apatite crystals at the level of
the Falkland tip) and metric to decametric doleritic veins of medium
orientation N-S, Paleozoic age. We also note the presence of enclaves of
gneiss, quartz and biotite schlierens whose preferential orientation
emphasizes the flow, that is to say the deformation of the rock in a
very plastic state.
In 2010, the climate of the municipality is of the frank oceanic
climate type, according to a CNRS study based on a series of data
covering the period 1971-2000. In 2020, Météo-France publishes a
typology of the climates of metropolitan France in which the
municipality is exposed to an oceanic climate and is in the climatic
region of eastern and southern Brittany, Pays Nantes, Vendée,
characterized by low rainfall in summer and good insolation. At the same
time, the environment observatory in Brittany publishes in 2020 a
climatic zoning of the Brittany region, based on data from Météo-France
from 2009. The town is, according to this zoning, in the "Mild coastal"
zone, exposed to a summer climate with mild summers.
For the
period 1971-2000, the average annual temperature is 11.5 ° C, with an
annual thermal amplitude of 11.6 ° C. The average annual cumulative
rainfall is 672 mm, with 12.1 days of precipitation in January and 6.3
days in July. For the period 1991-2020 the annual average temperature
observed on the nearest meteorological station, located in the town of
Pleurtuit 6 km as the crow flies, is 11.9 ° C and the average annual
cumulative rainfall is 752.0 mm. For the future, the climate parameters
of the municipality estimated for 2050 according to different greenhouse
gas emission scenarios can be consulted on a dedicated website published
by Météo-France in November 2022.
In 1901 the tramway line from Saint-Briac to Dinard was opened. It
was a metre-gauge steam tramway line that connected the cities of
Saint-Briac and Dinard via Saint-Lunaire. It was opened between 1901 and
1902. In 1929, the line closed to be replaced by a coach service.
The city of Dinard has developed its own bus network, in addition to
the existing departmental and regional coach lines, which connects the
different districts of the municipality on three lines. However, its
importance remains limited, the minibuses used passing only four times a
day, five days a week, and starting to date relatively.
Until
1987, the city was served directly, in season, by a train from
Paris-Montparnasse-Dinard. This link was removed and the station dating
from the late nineteenth century was demolished in the 2000s. However,
access to Dinard has recently been facilitated by the arrival of the TGV
connecting Paris to Saint-Malo station in less than three hours and
offering a connection by coach. For motorists, the free express lanes
make up for the lack of a motorway. A maritime shuttle connects Dinard
to Saint-Malo.
The city is also served by
Saint-Malo-Dinard-Pleurtuit Airport.
Dinard is an urban municipality, because it is part of the dense or
intermediate density municipalities, within the meaning of the Insee's
communal density grid. It belongs to the urban unit of Dinard, an
inter-departmental agglomeration grouping 9 municipalities and 32,991
inhabitants in 2017, of which it is the city-center.
In addition,
the town is part of the attraction area of Saint-Malo, of which it is a
municipality of the crown. This area, which includes 35 municipalities,
is categorized into areas of 50,000 to less than 200,000 inhabitants.
The municipality, bordered by the English Channel, is also a coastal
municipality within the meaning of the law of January 3, 1986, called
the coastal law. Specific urban planning provisions therefore apply in
order to preserve natural spaces, sites, landscapes and the ecological
balance of the coastline, such as the principle of unconstructibility,
outside urbanized spaces, on the coastal strip of 100 meters, or more if
the local urban planning plan provides for it.
The land use of the municipality, as it appears from the European database of biophysical land use Corine Land Cover (CLC), is marked by the importance of artificial territories (88.2% in 2018), an increase compared to 1990 (81.7%). The detailed distribution in 2018 is as follows: urbanized areas (70.7%), industrial or commercial areas and communication networks (9.3%), artificial green spaces, non-agricultural (8.2%), forests (5.8%), heterogeneous agricultural areas (5.3%), coastal wetlands (0.7%). The evolution of the land use of the municipality and its infrastructures can be observed on the various cartographic representations of the territory: the Cassini map (eighteenth century), the staff map (1820-1866) and the maps or aerial photos of the IGN for the current period (1950 to today)