La Teste-de-Buch is a commune in the Gironde department in Nouvelle-Aquitaine in southwestern France. It is located on the south shore of Arcachon Bay, lying in the southwestern part of Gironde. It is the largest of four communes that comprise the Communauté d’agglomération du Bassin d’Arcachon Sud (COBAS), a small metropolitan area of 54,204 population (1999 census). It is the eighth-largest commune in metropolitan France in geographical area.

Sights

Gemmage 

It is believed that pine tapping was practiced in La Teste for over 2,000 years. The harvested resin was first fired in ovens, locally called „hourns“, to produce the pitch, a tar used for caulking the hulls of ships, before being distilled for the production of turpentine . The end of the xx ^th  century saw the abandonment of tapping, turpentine suffering from lack of economic competitiveness against the arrival of the byproducts of the oil industry. Already in the previous century, the tar obtained from the extraction of coal had prevailed in the cooking of pitch. Coal and oil, strangely enough, were still economically involved in the life of the forest of La Teste:xix ^th  century with the supply of wood for the support of the coal mine galleries and the middle of the xx ^th  century with the operation, within it even more oil wells.

The forest is still one of the rare natural forests of the Landes de Gascogne that its inhabitants have exploited since the dawn of time and that their successors are committed to preserving.

Oyster farming 

The world of oyster farmers has long been made up of two kinds of populations: punters and shippers. The former sell their production to the latter, by breadmakers (fillets) of a thousand hand-sorted shells. The latter – often parkers themselves – taking care of a new sorting (by breeding area), packaging and shipment of packages (originally by rail) to many destinations. In the mid-sixties, after a severe epizootic affecting oyster production, many “punters” decided to sell their oysters themselves, directly, in various markets in the region and even beyond. The profession was starting to change. Sometimes dilapidated but typical of the oyster farming facilities of the Basin, the port of La Teste still comes alive until at late hours on December nights, when oyster shipments are prepared to meet the colossal order of these mollusks for the end of year celebrations. Difficult profession, theOyster farming is gradually losing its workers. There are less than six hundred left in the Arcachon basin for a production of around 14,000 tonnes.Main article: Oyster farming in Arcachon .

The oyster ports 

• The port of La Teste-de-Buch,
• The port of Rocher (named after doctor Christian Rocher, former owner of the place),
• The port of l’Aiguillon.

Natural heritage 

• The Bird Island in the center of the Arcachon basin
• Dune of Pilat
• The User Forest of Teste-de-Buch.
• Cazaux lake
• The Banc d’Arguin
• Ocean beaches: the Corniche, the Petit Nice, the Lagoon, La Salie .

Places and monuments 

• The Church of St. Vincent: place of worship since the xiv ^th  century former chapel of the castle of captaux Buch, several times enlarged and transformed to become church parish.
• The Saint-Pierre church (in Cazaux): initially located near the shores of the lake, threatened with silting up by a dune displacement, it was dismantled and then rebuilt at its current location in 1849.
• Maison de Verthamon or Hôtel de Caupos: rue du XIV-Juillet, this is the former town hall of La Teste-de-Buch. Property bequeathed to the town by Marie de Caupos, born onJune 30, 1725in La Teste, last heiress of a Testerine family having made a fortune in the trade and export of resinous products, having enabled her to buy the barony of Lacanau , the seigneury of Andernos and the viscounty of Biscarrosse . The building has been completely restored and houses the hybrid library of La Centrale . The town’s war memorial is in the immediate vicinity, on the rue Edmond-Doré side.
• Place Jean-Jaurès: former Place du Coum, it once hosted the wooden arenas of La Teste with 5,000 places where Landes races were held .
• Place Jean-Hameau: crossroads of the roads leading to Bordeaux , Arcachon , Cazaux and Le Pyla, it has gradually lost its importance over the years. This is probably the core of the town built from the xvi ^th  century. The concentration of ancient remains in its vicinity seems to confirm this.
• Maison Lalanne: place Jean Hameau, municipal library . Its surname comes from the last owner, widow of Doctor Lalanne ( 1909 ) who donated it to the town in 1928 . This transaction could not be completed until 1942 . Town hall of La Teste from 1857 to 1862 .
• The port of La Teste-de-Buch, claimed in the notebooks of grievances established by the Testerins in 1789 , was finally dug and fitted out in 1841 , when the railway line arrived, then enlarged. It is a beaching port. At its entrance, the channel connecting it to the Basin is divided into two arms, each backed by a dike, that of the east and that of the west; the part of the harbor between these two arms was called „the hull trick“ because it was there that much maintenance work for the testine flotilla was done. Serving mainly for fishing and then for oyster farming, the port was also used for the launching of boats made by the Tester shipyards. In particular, at the top of the East dike, it received the launching slipway for the Boyer shipyard before the one for the Raba Shipyards was fitted up at the top of the West seawall. Behind the east dike, closed at its entrance by a lock gate, a canal „Le Canelot“ was built serving the facilities of several „shippers“. 
• The Borde mill: the last vestige of a set of wind and water mills that the town had on its territory.
• Le Cippe Brémontier (on an eminence to the right of the road leading to Pyla-sur-Mer before the branch leading to the entrance to the International Golf of Arcachon: this cippe is a half-column without a capital, in red marble; it has been there since September 1818 to commemorate the first pine seedlings attributed to Nicolas Brémontier (1738-1809) Chief Engineer of Ponts et Chaussées in Bordeaux in 1784, Brémontier largely contributed to the pine seedlings to fix the sand dunes.
• The Lesca factory plant distillation of the gem , built in the xix ^th  century and destroyed in 1982 , fitted in from fire station.
• The Natus necropolis and the Courneau camp.
• The salt meadows.
• The Saint-Jean fountain. This fountain is located at the foot of a secular oak at the bottom of the Montagnette, at the end of the meadows of Branquecouraou, source of the sweet craste. It was from Testerine memory the place of pilgrimage where the population went in procession on Saint John’s Day. The old oak of the fountain had three trunks that started from its base, each trunk having a circumference of about 2.60 meters, the highest culminating at about twenty meters; one of these three trunks was broken on October 4, 1984, during the Hortense storm, 1.50 meters from its base.