The Great Dune of Pyla (or Pilat) is the tallest sand dune in Europe. It is located in La Teste-de-Buch in the Arcachon Bay area, France, 60 km from Bordeaux. Pilat is often spelled Pyla, hence the alternative name “dune of Pyla”. More accurately, Pyla is the name of the closest town, Pyla-sur-Mer, which is part of La Teste-de-Buch municipality in the Gironde department. The correct and original name of the dune is the Dune of Pilat, but because of the confusion that occurred, both are now considered correct.
The dune has a volume of about 60,000,000 m³, measuring around 500 meters wide (547 yards) from east to west and 3 kilometers in length (1.86 miles) from north to south. Its height is 107 metres (351 feet) above sea level. The dune is a famous tourist destination with more than one million visitors per year.
The dune is considered a foredune, meaning a dune that runs parallel to a shoreline, behind the high tide line of a beach. The dune has been observed to move landward, slowly pushing the forest back to cover houses, roads and even portions of the Atlantic Wall. To back this evidence of coastal movement, maps from 1708 and 1786 both place areas with the name Pilat to the south and off-shore of the current dune’s location. The area where the dune currently stands was referred to “Les Sabloneys” or the “New Sands” until the 1930′s when it was renamed by real estate developers as the Dune of Pilat. The Dune of Pyla is a recent modernization of the term. Pilat originates from the Gascon word Pilhar, which refers to a heap or mound.
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