Bègles occupies the left bank of the Garonne, immediately south of Bordeaux, whose urban fabric it extends without a break. The municipality stretches between the river, to the east, and the line of the ring road, to the west, on a former territory of marshes and drained wetlands. This position, at the gates of Bordeaux and on the banks of the Garonne, shaped its industrial history and then its integration into the metropolitan area.
In the nineteenth century, Bègles became the leading industrial suburb of Bordeaux. The town lived on cod drying, with its drying sheds lining the Garonne, on leather work and tanneries, and on the market gardening that supplied Bordeaux. The railway established a large depot there: the Dorat district grew around the station and housed up to fifteen hundred railway workers in the 1970s. This working-class and railway past remains part of the identity of Bègles, carried on today by facilities such as the musée de la Création Franche, devoted to outsider art.
The geography of prices follows this history. The north of the town, around Centujean, and the old village core, around the church of Saint-Pierre, form the top of the market. The Terres Neuves eco-district, to the north-east, on the boundary with Bordeaux and served by the tram, concentrates recent sales. The residential areas of the west and south-west, around Argous and Birambits, remain the most affordable.
