Rough Guides - The Rough Guide to Languedoc & Roussillon

This Rough Guide is one of a new generation of informative and easy-to-use travel-guide ebooks that guarantees you make the most of your trip. An essential tool for pre-trip planning, it also makes a great travel companion when youre on the road.

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Detailed area maps feature in the guide chapters and are also listed in the , accessible from the table of contents. Depending on your hardware, you can double-tap on the maps to see larger-scale versions, or select different scales. There are also thumbnails below more detailed maps in these cases, you can opt to zoom left/top or zoom right/bottom or view the full map. The screen-lock function on your device is recommended when viewing enlarged maps. Make sure you have the latest software updates, too.

Throughout the guide, weve flagged up our favourite places a perfectly sited hotel, an atmospheric caf, a special restaurant with the author pick icon . You can select your own favourites and create a personalized itinerary by bookmarking the sights, venues and activities that are of interest, giving you the quickest possible access to everything youll need for your time away.

Languedoc and Roussillon, down in the far south of France, offer a wide range of dramatically different experiences. The star of the show is undoubtedly the 240km Canal du Midi, one of seven UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the area, which in 2016 celebrated the 350th anniversary of the start of its construction. Then there are the major cities: Toulouse, capital of the new Occitanie region and HQ of Europes aviation industry; and Montpellier, whose striking modern neighbourhoods and cutting-edge architecture sit in stark contrast to the narrow streets and tree-shaded squares of its delightful medieval old town. The regions wealth of delicious seafood, charming fishing villages and glorious beaches, meanwhile, comes courtesy of its 215km of coastline; and both here and inland, the Mediterranean climate provides the perfect conditions for producing some of the countrys oldest and best-known wines.

In and around Nmes , youll find several examples of the finest Roman remains in existence, which are celebrated in the citys new Muse de la Romanit; while about 50km to the south lies Port Camargue , the largest pleasure-port in Europe and a magnet for watersports enthusiasts. In medieval times, the hills of Aude and Arige offered the perfect hiding places for the Cathar heretics ; their ruined vertiginous castles, including Montsgur , still pierce the skyline, and are must-sees. Yet even away from the tourist hotspots, youll encounter remote villages and wild landscapes that afford an invaluable window onto a vanishing European rural culture. Then factor in the more than twenty ski and spa resorts, six regional natural parks and huge network of walking and cycling routes and you have a strong case for Languedoc and Roussillon together forming the most enticing and intriguing patch of the country.

Yet while its charms are indisputable, the boundaries of Languedoc have never been easy to fix. It was at the end of the thirteenth century that agents of the King of France first spoke about the patria lingue occitane, the lands where the Occitan language ( langue dOc ) was spoken, when creating three administrative regions centred in Beaucaire, Carcassonne and Toulouse. Nowadays, that historical Languedoc is a hazy entity within Occitanie, the new super-region created in 2016. In defining Languedoc in this Guide weve avoided contemporary administrative boundaries in favour of its historical origins and the logistics of travel, so that the region butts up to neighbouring Provence at the Rhne, and stretches west and inland to include the medieval capital of Toulouse, as well as the lands around Foix in the south and Albi in the north. Roussillon , squashed in between the eastern Pyrenees and the Corbires hills, is also characterized by a particular linguistic heritage, derived in this case from a long history as part of the Catalan confederacy centred in Barcelona. Both regions have distinct cultures, but share a common history of occupation and resistance and of eventual submission to the modern France of Paris and the North.

THE CANAL DU MIDI

In the 1660s a local tax-collector, Paul Riquet , dreamed of bringing prosperity back to Languedoc by building a canal to link it to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. This mammoth undertaking was the most ambitious and complex civic engineering project since the time of the Romans. Although it bankrupted the visionary Riquet, who did not live to see its inauguration, by 1856 the canal was carrying one million passengers and more than 100,000 tonnes of freight per year. Struck down into sudden obsolescence by the invention of the steam engine, the canal system languished in disrepair for over a century, before being resurrected in the last few decades as a tourist attraction. The quintessential Languedoc experience is to boat , walk or cycle along Riquets canal, travelling at an easy pace, the tree-lined banks providing shelter from the same sun that ripens up the regions famous grapes.

MONTPELLIER OLD TOWN