In the 1920s in Dinard, the swimming pool held a central position in a casino, equipped with portholes positioned under the water level so that, even from the reception room, no one loses out on the sight of the bathers… and the machinery!
As for hygiene, functionality dictated décor: white smooth walls with rounded angles and without embellishments; the use of washable materials such as enamelled bricks, mosaic and marble; the choice of oil paint so that the walls could be hosed down. In Trouville the motto was “air, light, white paint”.
In 1908, the first sea facing thermal seawater baths opened in Monaco.
As the shore was a public domain, most often controlled by the military, the implementation of sea bathing facilities was subject to approval. Most of the time the building had to be dismantled from one season to the next! The town council in Nice, with their notorious severity, banned thalassos granting no appeal as they thought it ruined the look of the bay…
In 1950 Denis Leroy brought his therapeutic skills to thalassotherapy by inventing kinebalneotherapy. In view of a boom in new visitors and establishments, the French thalassotherapy association was created in 1959.
In 1964 the cyclist Louison Bobet decided to develop thalassotherapy activity in France by opening the Quiberon institute, the precursor of modern thalassotherapy centres.