Launch Puzzles Reveal Week 3 — Biarritz City Pack
This week, we’re happy to announce the “Biarritz City Pack”, a pack of puzzles featuring some of the beautiful sites and neighborhoods of the French Atlantic city of Biarritz!
This puzzle pack was created in collaboration with Gerpho3D, a French Photogrammetry company that specializes in using planes and helicopters to capture cities, castles, and massive landscapes at an incredible scale and resolution. We’re excited to continue our collaboration to create more puzzles in the near future.
The Biarritz City pack includes the following three puzzles:
- Biarritz Lighthouse
- Coast of Basques
- Port Vieux Neighborhood
Location Background
Biarritz, or Miarritze as it’s known in Basque, is a coastal city in the French Basque country in the southwest corner of France, nearly bordering Spain. The city is famous for its beaches, hotel casinos, as well as its surfing culture.
Although there is evidence to suggest that the region around Biarritz was inhabited by people as far back 50 to 300 thousand years ago, the city of Biarritz as it’s known today dates back to the 11th century where it functioned as a small whale hunting town. In the 18th century and 19th century, the town started to become a popular destination as a spa-town to offer hydrotherapy to visitors from around the world.
The Biarritz Lighthouse puzzle includes the northernmost parts of the city, including, the lighthouse which was built in 1834 overlooking Cape Hainsart, the peninsula, the beaches surrounding it, as well as the Golf de Biarritz golf course.
The Coast of Basques puzzle features the southernmost parts of the city featuring the Grande Plage neighborhood with its beautiful, red-tiled houses and a surf-friendly beach. This puzzle is an absolute treat for people that like to puzzle miniature cityscapes and explore a beautiful 3D map of a neighborhood from above.
And last but not least, the Port Vieux Neighborhood puzzle featuring the famous Rocher de la Vierge rock formation, the Biarritz Aquarium, the Hôtel Du Palais (built by Empress Eugenie and frequented by Queen victoria and King Edward VII), as well as the Port des Pêcheurs, an old fisherman’s port.
Puzzle Creation Story
The Biarritz City Pack puzzles were created by using an incredibly dense Photogrammetry model of the city captured by Philippe Graindorge of Gerpho3D.
By using a helicopter flying on a carefully planned route around the city, the city was captured with photographs from all angles by Philippe strapping himself in, opening the helicopter door, and shooting out towards the city as the helicopter flew circles around the city.
It’s worth noting that although the buildings, rocks, and beaches are favorable to be turned into a 3D model using Photogrammetry, reconstructing water using photogrammetry can be a fool’s errand. However, given how important the Atlantic ocean is representing the essence of the city, the beaches and the nearby ocean had to be painstakingly hand-made to create the beautiful models that we have as puzzles today.
