Coverage France
Audio Guide Dinard
app, one-time €4.99
Dinard earned the nickname 'the French Riviera of the North' when English and Parisian aristocrats began building extravagant villas along its Emerald Coast in the 1870s. Over 400 Belle Époque villas still line the headlands today. A Napoleon III-commissioned villa that the emperor never once visited is now a museum of how it all began.
14+ researched places in the app
Yes. Parroo is a self-guided audio guide for Dinard: 14 researched places, from Écluse Beach to Belle Époque Villas of Dinard and Promenade du Clair de Lune, each with a short summary, a full article, and a roughly three-minute audio story in German, English, and French. Buy once, no subscription, no booking. Start whenever you like.
Audio sample: Écluse Beach
Dinard
Places researched in this city
A selection of the 14 places we've researched in this city. The full set is in the Parroo app.
- Belle Époque villas
- Coastal promenades
- Historic beaches
- Bronze monuments
- Modernist architecture
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01
Écluse Beach
The first bathing establishment here opened around 1858, and a wooden casino followed just eight years later, turning a working shore into the social heart of one of France's most fashionable resorts. Flanked by two rocky headlands and facing Saint-Malo, it remains the centrepiece of Dinard's seaside identity.
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02
Belle Époque Villas of Dinard
Between 1870 and 1914, English visitors and Parisian elites built more than 400 villas in styles ranging from neo-Gothic to Moorish along Dinard's coastline, transforming a modest fishing village into what became known as 'the queen of the Emerald Coast'. Two of them, Villa Les Roches Brunes and Villa Greystones, are now classified Historic Monuments.
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03
Promenade du Clair de Lune
Completed in 1931 specifically to revive tourism after the 1929 crash, this two-kilometre coastal walkway is lined with exotic palms and cedars, bronze bas-reliefs, and seawater pools, and every summer it hosts open-air illuminations and performances along the channel shore.
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04
Villa Les Roches Brunes
Built between 1893 and 1896 by a Parisian couturier known simply as 'Félix', it is the only example of the neo-Louis XIII style in Dinard, sitting on a rocky promontory with panoramic sea views. The city received it as a donation in 2007 and it was listed as a Historic Monument in 2014.
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05
Villa Eugenie, Musée du Site Balnéaire
Napoleon III commissioned this granite-and-slate villa with four circular towers in 1866, yet he and Empress Eugénie never once set foot inside it. Local legend holds that Eugénie cancelled her stay over a dispute about her small dog, leaving the grandest address in Dinard permanently without its intended guests.
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06
Statue of Alfred Hitchcock
A bronze Hitchcock stands on the Promenade des Alliés with a seagull on one shoulder and a crow on the other, a direct nod to 'The Birds' (1963). Unveiled on 8 October 2009 during the Dinard British Film Festival, the annual event still awards the 'Hitchcock d'Or' as its top prize.
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07
Olympic Seawater Pool
When the Art Deco Casino Balnéum was demolished in 1967, it was replaced by this stark modernist concrete pool measuring 50 by 17.5 metres, decorated with a mosaic by Charles Gianferrari. A full seawater Olympic pool hidden inside a brutalist block on the seafront is not what most visitors expect to find in a Belle Époque resort.
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08
7 more places to discover
In the Parroo app
Good to know
14 researched places, from Écluse Beach and the Belle Époque Villas to lesser-known spots like the Olympic Seawater Pool. Each one has a short summary, a full article, and a ~3-minute audio story.
Yes. Every place has a ~3-minute audio story, written from the perspective of a guide standing next to you and produced with premium narration, not the article read aloud.
German, English, and French. Pick whichever you'd rather read or listen in.
No booking, no signup. It's a self-guided walk you start whenever you like. You do need a connection for now to stream the audio and load articles; offline support is something we're still building.
A one-time €4.99 for the whole city, no subscription and no recurring cost. You buy Dinard once and keep access to all 14 places with text and audio.
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Open this city in Parroo
Get the full articles, audio stories, and map for this city in the Parroo app. One payment per geography. Yours to keep.
Updated: 2026-09-25