A summer of escape games (4/7): the Cité des Mémoires in Hendaye, devilishly fun

The museum, which will open in 2024, features a very accessible permanent exhibition that visitors can choose to explore via a treasure hunt. But true gamers can test themselves directly in the escape game on the ground floor...

Tourists staying in Hendaye used to tick Abbadia Castle off their agendas; now they'll have to make do with the Cité des Mémoires. Opened in 2014 in the heart of the border town's downtown, this museum tells the local story through a carefully crafted and highly entertaining presentation.

Visitors won't just read the signs or watch the site's rich video archives, but will also push buttons, play at lifting panels, smell spices, and even prepare a typical dish themselves on a touchscreen. "It's a favorite activity for children," explains Jean-Sébastien Halty. "They can easily spend twenty minutes to half an hour there. The visit time for parents is perfect."

The tour features several worlds, each decorating a room. "Myth and Witchcraft," "Bidasoa," "Maritime Tradition," and "Smuggling" are on the menu of discoveries. Hendaye residents will recognize major figures from their heritage, such as Anne of Austria, Zan Pantzar, Bixente Lizarazu, and Andoni Etxarri, the first olentzero of the French Basque Country, these mythological characters, like charcoal burners who came down from the mountains.

Those who have flashcoded the treasure hunt associated with the entrance ticket (an adult version and a version for 8-12 year-olds) will pay close attention to the chapter on the inquisitor Pierre de Lancre. In the second room, which recounts the countless Franco-Spanish conflicts that took place in the Bidasoa River, they will count the horsemen who accompanied Wellington at low tide when Napoleon had lost his splendor.

The unwary visitor will be surprised by a fake cannon shot and its smoke, which are there to remind us of the existence of a fort in Hendaye opposite Hondarribia. "This poor town of Hendaye was always destroyed because it was facing Spain, while Saint-Jean-de-Luz remained very quiet," observes a slightly chauvinistic local. "That's also why the geography of the town is so complicated!"

You'll quickly have to refocus after reading the fascinating panels on the Treaties of the Pyrenees in 1659 and Bayonne two hundred years later, which sealed the Franco-Iberian Entente Cordiale. In the large room dedicated to maritime tradition, the treasure hunt invites you to compare the sizes of fish that can be caught or those that must be released. Be careful to read the statements carefully... We learn some green and unripe things here, like the barely believable tradition that, until recently, authorized Icelanders to kill Basque sailors who came to fish in their territorial waters!

The adventure continues with the construction of Hendaye Beach and the railway line in the 19th century. The station, which would host the meeting between Hitler and Franco on October 22, 1940, was on the agenda some time later. In the meantime, we'll have spent a long time discovering the great market of smugglers, from ball bearings to drug shipments. Where we learn that Pierre Loti rarely traveled empty-handed...

The treasure hunt (and the tour) is coming to an end as you approach a border post that tells the story of the regulated passages from one country to another, up until the liberation of the Schengen Agreement. A final zest of general knowledge (did you know that Izarra was the "liqueur of Hendaye" in its early days?) and finally here is the room dedicated to gastronomy, the one where you left the descendants. It's time to go home... or throw yourself headlong into the escape game.