[3] Situated on the English Channel immediately north the mouth of the river Authie, Berck boasts over 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) of sandy beaches and grass-topped dunes,[4] and since the middle of the 19th century it has been a destination for convalescents and vacationers.

The oldest parts of Berck are now 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mi) inland from both river and sea,[10] presumably because of deposition, but at the time of its founding village was on the coast and what is now the church of St-Jean-Baptiste began its existence as a lighthouse (first wooden, then stone).

The chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet mentions that during 1414 the English garrison in Calais raided south and burned the town.

[11] During the second siege of Montreuil in 1544, the English advanced from the south and burned 200 houses, the church and the mill as they passed through Berck.

Its seating for 1,500 was to cater principally to holiday makers in season and to the patients from the many medical establishments profiting from the sea air.

[21] Another official building that survived the bombing was the town hall, which was built in 1893 and has murals painted by Jan Lavezzari.

[22] After the stone tower of St John the Baptist fell into disuse as a lighthouse, it was replaced at first by a primitive oil lamp suspended in the dunes to mark the sandbars at the river mouth.

The two buildings, referred to locally as father and son (le père et fils), stood next to each other until they were dynamited by the Germans in 1944.

[24] The steady sea breezes and the updraft created by the neighbouring dunes once made the town the centre of a number of aeronautical experiments.

The artist Jan Lavezzari, who had originally studied engineering, tested a double lateen sail hang glider from the Merlimont sand dunes in February 1904.

He was followed there that Easter by Gabriel Voisin, who made a trial flight in a glider plane modelled on that of the Wright Brothers and over a few seconds was airborne for 50 metres.

[28] Since 1986 there has been an annual kite-flying festival each April on the sands, attracting international exhibits of great beauty and inventiveness.

[31] Painters joined the 19th century Parisian visitors to the town and passed on news of their discovery to fellow artists in the capital.

[42] Among minor artists who have made Berck a subject in their work are Paul Laugée (1853–1937);[43] Eugène Chigot (1860–1923),[44] who had a studio there in 1893; and Georges Maroniez,[45] a judge who painted and photographed in the area during holidays.

As a thanks offering for his cure, Besnard and his wife Charlotte decorated the walls of the chapel in the Cazin-Perrochaud Institute between the years 1898–1901.

[50] She had visited it in 1961 and wrote the poem a year later, mixing memories of maimed war veterans at the Berck hospital with impressions of the recent death and funeral of a neighbour.

[51] In Jean-Paul Sartre's Le Sursis (The Reprieve), the character of Charles is evacuated from the military hospital at Berck just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

The town also figured in the novel Une année à Berck by Christian Morel de Sarcus (Paris, 1997).

The Picard dialect poet Ivar Ch'Vavar was born in the town in 1951 and, though he now lives in Amiens, has often written about it, most notably in Berck (un poème), published in 1997.