Villa Le Cercle
This graceful edifice was built during the Belle Epoque for the exclusive Paris Jockey Club. It was a lively place, bustling with receptions attended by Parisians and visiting celebrities alike. Le Cercle accompanied the birth of the city, which emerged from the sands in 1860, barely thirteen years before this building was constructed.
INSPIRATIONS
Between the casino and the Hôtel Royal lie the brick facades of the Cercle, designed in 1873 by Desle-François Breney, who also drew up Deauville's urban plan. When commissioned, Breney drew his inspiration from the Hôtel de Salm. A private mansion close to the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which became the Musée de la Légion d'Honneur in 1804. This same Hôtel de Salm had also seduced Thomas Jefferson when he was U.S. Ambassador to France, and inspired the design of the White House.
The Club is the summer annex of the Paris Jockey Club (founded in 1836). Based on the principle of English clubs, its aim is to bring together men who share the same passion for horses.
In 2000, noting the dilapidated state of the building, occupied for only one month a year, the president of the Cercle entered into an agreement with the town of Deauville. The latter financed the restoration of the building in exchange for the right to use it for eleven months of the year. Today, the Cercle is a cultural, economic and social meeting place. It can be rented out for private events.
Meeting place
See the commercial siteDISTINCTIVE FEATURES
Le Cercle is characteristic of Napoleon III architecture with :
- A flat-roofed terrace,
- Large bay windows interspersed with colonnades
- An arched rotunda
- Openings topped by niches adorned with terracotta busts.
The building is constructed in red bricks from the Croix Sonnet brickworks and yellow bricks from the Touques brickworks, the same materials used to build the Eglise Saint Augustin.
Like 555 Deauville villas, Le Cercle is listed in Deauville's Aire de Mise en Valeur de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine (AVAP).
