A sea bathing consists, as its name indicates it, to bathe (completely or partly) in the sea, and of thus being able to benefit from the waves and the specificity of marine water. A sea bathing can be ludic, but also with therapeutic goal. With the development of the rail-bound transports then Automobile S, the fashion of the sea bathings develops starting from the end of the 19th century. This tendency, reinforced throughout the 20th century in particular thanks to the appearance of the Paid vacations encourages the creation of seaside resorts on the coast Atlantique (Biarritz) and in Manche (Touquet), sometimes with the site of old villages of fishermen (Audresselles, Wissant).

Today the sea bathings were strongly democratized, and the initially Parisian practices are from now on those many Belgians, Britanniques and Germans.