The history of the Centre International de Deauville

Deau­ville was born in 1858 around the church of Saint Laurent, it had only a hun­dred inhab­it­ants, all loc­ated on the hill of Mont Canisy. After a stay in Trouville-sur-mer, the Duke of Morny, half-broth­er of Napo­leon III, fell under the spell of the marshes and the beach loc­ated after this small vil­lage on the Côte Fleur­ie and decided to acquire it in order to devel­op an ideal sea­side resort. He sur­roun­ded him­self with an archi­tect and a fin­an­ci­er in order to make the future Deau­ville resort elit­ist and built a casino, a racetrack, a com­mer­cial port and a rail­way line in order to facil­it­ate access and devel­op activ­it­ies with­in the town. Deau­ville was built in only 4 years and the archi­tec­ture of the sea­side resort took shape. From the 1910s on, the most pres­ti­gi­ous places in Deau­ville were cre­ated and designed by Eugène Cor­nuché: the Hotel Le Nor­mandy, Le Roy­al and the Hotel du Golf. As the years went by, the eques­tri­an scene became more and more pop­u­lar, as did the golf course and events such as the Amer­ic­an Film Fest­iv­al, which became more demo­crat­ic: this was one of the first steps towards extend­ing the resort’s off-sea­son activity.

From 1965 to 1970, Deau­ville was one of the top 5 con­fer­ence and sem­in­ar des­tin­a­tions in France. The city wel­comed between 1,000 and 3,000 con­ven­tion­eers and adap­ted to the demand by installing tents on Eugène Cor­nuché Boulevard or in the park­ing lot of the Deau­ville La Touques racetrack. The town’s voca­tion became more and more import­ant and it hos­ted major trade shows such as TOP RESA in 1978 and TOP COM in 1984.

In 1987, the very attract­ive Des­tin­a­tion Deau­ville received 35,305 con­ven­tion­eers but refused to host 14 con­ven­tions due to a lack of space; the city could not accom­mod­ate all the conventioneers.

Thus, the need for a recep­tion area for sem­inars and con­ven­tions quickly became appar­ent. Anne d’Or­nano, the city’s may­or, wanted to fur­ther devel­op busi­ness tour­ism and sup­por­ted the pro­ject for a con­ven­tion cen­ter. At the time, this was an ambi­tious pro­ject for a sea­side resort of 3,000 inhabitants.

On Decem­ber 30, 1988, a jury com­posed of Deau­vil­lais, pro­fes­sion­als and the city coun­cil chose the archi­tect Patrick Le Gos­lès, a nat­ive of the region, and the com­pan­ies Quillery and Rufa, among oth­ers, for the real­iz­a­tion and con­struc­tion of the CITC: Centre Inter­na­tion­al Tour­istique et Cul­turel. The ini­tial pro­ject fore­sees a hall of 850 places and an under­ground park­ing of 1200 places under the ten­nis courts.

After a study trip to the United States and under the advice of the Amer­ic­ans, the plan of the C.I.D. was mod­i­fied: the enlarge­ment of hall 3 under the aven­ue Lucien Bar­rière was decided and the aud­it­or­i­um went from 850 to nearly 1500 seats.

The build­ing per­mit was gran­ted and the Deau­ville Con­ven­tion Cen­ter was to be semi-bur­ied and not exceed 3.50m above ground. The ground­break­ing cere­mony took place on Janu­ary 2, 1991 in the former Casino gar­dens. More than 150,000 m³ of sand and gravel were removed.

In Feb­ru­ary 1991, the found­a­tion piles of the estab­lish­ment were laid and the two main beams were installed.

Dur­ing the con­struc­tion, a promon­tory was installed to allow the pub­lic to fol­low the pro­gress of the work and a frieze was spe­cially cre­ated by Michel Deschamps cov­er­ing the whole of the C.I.D.‘s sur­round­ings; this visu­al cor­res­ponds to a sim­u­la­tion of the sketches, reveal­ing the future sil­hou­ette of the Pal­ais des congrès.

The Michel d’Or­nano aud­it­or­i­um was delivered in Decem­ber 1991, fol­lowed by the cre­ation of a “Casino gal­lery” tun­nel under the Boulevard Cor­nuché link­ing the Deau­ville Casino and the Centre Inter­na­tion­al de Deauville.

In March 1992, the dec­or­at­ing com­pan­ies moved into the con­ven­tion cen­ter and cre­ated the iden­tity and pres­ti­gi­ous, upscale atmo­sphere of the CID, using the col­ors chosen to rep­res­ent the Deau­ville des­tin­a­tion: blue/gray, green and beige.

With the scale of the pro­ject arous­ing curi­os­ity, tours open to the pub­lic and guided by Hubert Moisy and Patrick Le Gos­lès, the pro­ject archi­tect, began in the spring of 1992.

In total, more than 250 mil­lion francs (nearly 55 mil­lion euros), 350,000 hours of work and nearly 400 men were needed to build the CID.

Aven­ue Lucien Bar­rière was inaug­ur­ated on August 29, 1992 by Anne d’Or­nano and Diane Bar­rière-Des­sei­gne, and the Centre Inter­na­tion­al de Deau­ville was inaug­ur­ated on Septem­ber 4, 1992 by Clint East­wood, who came to present his new film “Impitoy­able” at the 18^th Deau­ville Amer­ic­an Film Festival.

Thanks to Yves Aub­let for his testi­mony and for shar­ing his photos.

Photo cred­it: Yves Aublet

Dis­cov­er 30 years of events at the C.I.D in video :