536 - Join Us in France Travel Podcast

Table of Contents for this Episode

Categories: Montpellier Area, Occitanie, Off the Beaten Track in France

Discussed in this Episode

Béziers
Toulouse Guided Walks
Canal du Midi
Les Neuf Écluses de Fonseranes
Pont Vieux
Église de la Madeleine
Béziers Cathedral
Place de la Révolution
Allée Paul Riquet
Parc des Poètes
Château Laurens
Oppidum d'Ensérune
Abbaye de Fontcaude
Abbaye de Valmagne
Valras-Plage
Les Halles de Béziers
Jean Moulin Museum
Pierre-Paul Riquet
Jean Moulin
Trencavel
Paul Riquet Avenue
Mayor Robert Ménard
Reporters sans Frontières
Mediterranean cuisine
Tielle de Sète
Corbières wine
Languedoc wine
Narbonne
Montpellier
Sète
Collioure
Ramblas Biterroise
Aude River
Orb River

[00:00:16] Annie: This is Join Us in France, episode 536, cinq cent trente-six.

Bonjour, I’m Annie Sargent and Join Us in France is the podcast where we take a conversational journey through the beauty, culture, and flavors of France.

Today on the podcast

[00:00:31] Annie: Today, I bring you a conversation with Elyse Rivin of Toulouse Guided Walks about the beautiful and historic city of Béziers.

In this episode, we delve into the intriguing past of Béziers, explore its cultural significance, and discuss how this charming city is evolving today.

Whether you’re planning a visit, or just curious about French history and culture, this episode is packed with fascinating stories and insights.

Join us for a journey through one of France’s oldest cities and discover what makes Béziers a hidden gem.

Podcast supporters

[00:01:04] Annie: This podcast is supported by donors and listeners who buy my tours and services, including my Itinerary Consult Service, my GPS self-guided tours of Paris on the VoiceMap app, or take a day trip with me around the Southwest of France in my electric car.

You can browse all of that at my boutique: joinusinfrance.com/boutique.

And remember, patreon supporters get the podcast ad-free, and as soon as it’s ready. Click on the link in the show notes to enjoy this Patreon reward for as little as $3 per month.

The Magazine segment

[00:01:37] Annie: For the magazine part of the podcast, after my chat with Elyse today, I’ll discuss a few of the most important events, both sports and cultural, going on in France in the next few months, a few of them, not all of them, obviously. That’s because I hope you might be able to attend some of them.

Introduction and Overview of Béziers

[00:02:04] Annie: Bonjour, Elyse.

[00:02:05] Elyse: Bonjour Annie.

[00:02:07] Annie: We are going to talk about the city of Béziers today, we were just there a few days ago, and so we wanted to record it while it’s fresh in our minds. It’s not going to come out for a while, you know, but it was a very nice visit. It was late in December, on a Monday. It was cold and still, it was really good.

[00:02:31] Elyse: It was very nice. And of course, it was indeed cold, but because Béziers is very close to the Mediterranean, in the Southwest of France, once the morning fog blew away, it was a beautiful blue sky.

Journey to Béziers

[00:02:45] Annie: Right, so we left the house, picked you up at what, 8:30 or something? And we drove off towards the Mediterranean from Toulouse. We had fog, fog, fog, fog, fog until just a little bit before Béziers. And that’s par for the course in the Southwest of France. We get a lot of fog in the morning, that’s just how it is.

[00:03:05] Elyse: We do. And then, of course, all of a sudden, you have this blue sky. It was so nice.

[00:03:09] Annie: Yes, lovely place. All right, tell us about Béziers and I’ll interject with things that we did that I found really nice.

[00:03:16] Elyse: OK.

Béziers: A Medium-Sized City with a Rich History

[00:03:17] Elyse: First of all, Béziers is, I was curious to look up the numbers because one of the things we were talking about while we were there was just about how big it is. It’s hard to judge because it’s a city that’s built on hills. So it’s very imposing, you can see it from the autoroute, you can see it pretty much coming in from every direction. It looks majestic, and it’s very, very dramatic looking with a huge cathedral that you could see from far away. But it is in fact a relatively medium-sized city. It has just about 80,000 people.

[00:03:48] Annie: Oh, that’s a good number.

[00:03:49] Elyse: So, it’s a little bit bigger than Albi, but much, much smaller, for instance, than Nîmes, and Montpellier, which are the two bigger cities that are really close by.

The Appeal of Béziers for Expats

[00:03:58] Annie: Right. And of late, I’ve heard of several expats settling in or near Béziers. It’s become a place that attracts a lot of people because real estate prices are not super high, considering that it’s very close to the beach and has temperate, pretty good weather most of the year.

[00:04:18] Elyse: Most of the year.

[00:04:19] Annie: So that’s just something I wanted to throw in there. I actually know a few expats who’ve moved there from other parts of France.

[00:04:27] Elyse: Yes. One of the reasons being that it is still a city that doesn’t have as expensive real estate as, for instance, Montpellier or Nîmes or some of the other places. And that is a little bit part of its recent history, its 20th century history, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But it’s also true that it is very, very close to the sea. It’s 20 kilometers from the water.

So, obviously, it’s not that easy if you don’t have a car, but there are, I’m sure there are buses and other forms of transPaulation. Just to give people an idea, if you’ve never been to Béziers, it’s seven and a half hours by car from Paris, or four hours and 10 minutes by train on the bullet train, which is the big line that goes right to Montpellier and then down, you know, so it’s relatively good transPaulation.

From Montpellier, it’s very close, it’s 40 minutes by car, 25 minutes by train. And from Toulouse, it’s, what? In the paper it says 2:15, I guess that was about right. Two hours, I would say it took us about two hours to get there, you know.

[00:05:26] Annie: It was foggy, so I didn’t drive, you know, as fast as you would if it, well, wasn’t foggy. Yeah.

[00:05:33] Elyse: By train it’s also really quite easy to get to, it’s just an hour and a half from Toulouse by train. So it’s not that far. But it is indeed very, very close to the sea. It’s considered to be Mediterranean climate. The vegetation is mostly Mediterranean. And, which it kind of amused me, because I hadn’t realized that, and I have to confess that having visited almost everything in the area around there, this is the very first time that I’d actually been to the center of Béziers, when I was there with you. I don’t know why, but it just happened to be.

Historical Significance and Archaeological Discoveries

[00:06:04] Elyse: And I thought it was very amusing that as we come in, there are these big, big, big billboard panels that say, “Béziers, the oldest city in France.” You know? So this is now one of their selling points.

I’m not sure, it’s interesting from a historical point of view, I’m not sure how much of a selling point it is, to be honest. You know? Really, you know? But I was like curious about it because, you know, though in my mind, aside from all of the cities that were built basically under the Romans, which of course includes Toulouse and Lyon, and even eventually Paris, in my mind, of course, the oldest, oldest, oldest, of course, was Marseille because it was started by the Greeks.

So it turns out that in the last, what, I don’t know exactly why, I guess because archaeologists always have to find something to do, you know, and a place to dig. And I think because there has been a lot of work done in the last 30, 35 years in the old city center of Béziers to build new things, like that huge, very fancy mall that we saw that’s called Antigone, that’s very well known. In the digging, as often happens, they discover things.

That’s of course how they discovered a lot of things here in Toulouse. And it turns out that it became very important as discovery, and they brought in a lot of archaeologists because they found, and this is really in the old part, so very close to where we were walking around and had lunch, there’s a kind of a, an underground ruin of what was basically a Greek city.

They were surprised, actually. I think that the historians and the archaeologists were surprised. There probably was something written about it. The Romans were good at writing down everything. But it turns out that it really dates from just about the same time as the Greek establishments of colonies and the trading centers, at the coast along the Mediterranean in Marseille.

And they found enough evidence that apparently Béziers was a huge center of ceramics. And, you know, one of the things they do with things like archaeology is to get an idea. I don’t know if you can carbon date ceramics, if there’s nothing organic on them, but they test by comparing styles, you know? If the style here is the same as the style there, if they use the same kind of stuff on it, then it means that there’s obviously been contact and it’s more or less contemporaneous. So it turns out that Béziers can go in and do a battle with Marseille, claiming to be the oldest city in France.

[00:08:32] Annie: Hmm. Yeah, I’m not certain, but they are cleaning it up very nicely.

[00:08:36] Elyse: Yes. Well, they actually have to. And of course, one of the reasons why is because, starting with its most recent history, instead of working from the very, very back end going up, Béziers is a city, and it’s really typical of a lot of the cities in the southwest of France, not necessarily in Provence.

Provence is a little bit different, I’m not sure exactly why. But a lot of things changed and a lot of these areas around Nîmes, around Béziers, and around Montpellier, sociologically changed enormously because of the war with Algeria. And, what happened was, of course, after the war was over and Algeria got its independence.

I’m not sure whether to use a passive form or not. Did it gain its independence or was given? I’m not sure. What happened was, of course, there was a huge influx of people known as Pieds Noir, which, of course, you know all about because that’s part of your family. And those were the people

were basically European, but who had been living for several generations in Algeria. But there was also a huge influx into this particular area around Béziers and Montpellier and Nîmes, of Algerians. And that was because of the fact that this is the largest wine-growing area of France, and a huge agricultural area. And because a lot of people who were originally from Algeria came over, bought land, and developed even more of the vineyards. So it became an area that had a huge immigration population.

[00:10:08] Annie: Right.

[00:10:10] Elyse: And immigration population means lots of changes sociologically, lots of changes in what the cities look like. And eventually, going from the 1960s up into now, into the 2020s, the poor population coming in lives in the poorer neighborhoods, obviously. And then what happens is, once those start getting gentrified, there’s a need to find other ways of housing them.

And so Béziers is a city that basically has gone through a flux of up and down, where it was basically not in great shape after World War II, and its economic status was not that dynamic. But the influx of the population created a huge dynamism connected to the wine industry, but then it created problems with having so many immigrants.

And so now what’s happening is they are gentrifying the city center, and they’re trying to create a better environment because a lot of the old, old buildings, and that was one of the things I know we talked about as we walked around, you can still see are not in great shape. They’re very old, they’re very beautiful, but I guess it takes a lot of money to sort of gentrify and fix up the whole old city center, you know?

[00:11:16] Annie: Yeah, I think they’ll get there. What we saw that was pretty impressive is that they’ve developed a walking path between the Canal du Midi, because it ends… Well, you know, it’s… it comes through Béziers. And there’s nine locks in a row, which is one of the things that we recommend you go see. All the way from there to the old bridge and going through the city.

And they’ve developed this voie douce, so it’s a walking path and you can go obviously with bicycles or whatever, but no motors. And it’s a lovely walk, and in the parts where it’s steep, they’ve put in elevators. Unfortunately, one of them was not working and I was not about to go down 200 steps to… So, we got back in the car because I knew coming back up was going to be… Well, it hurts my knees both ways. Hopefully, this elevator problem will get sorted out and it’s a very nice voie douce, it’s a very pleasant walk, and I think thats one of the reasons why it’s attracting more visitors and more new residents as well, because it’s improving its quality of life today.

The city of Béziers has, of course, a big chunk of the Canal du Midi and it also has a very beautiful bridge called the Old Bridge, which is very original as a title, but it is actually very beautiful, and that is down, and it’s across a river called the Orb, O-R-B, which that and the Aude, A-U-D-E, which of course is the name of the department, are the two rivers that basically run through and circulate around Béziers, and that is where, that all meets up with the Canal du Midi. So there’s a lot of waterway down below.

One of the things about Béziers is that it is indeed steep. It’s hills. So when you go to visit, for instance, the oldest parts of it, they are up on top. That is the cathedral and the walkway, which is the huge Allée Jean Jaurès, and the market, the covered market that we went to that was great.

Yeah. So, like every French town, it has a Les Halles. You can always search for Les Halles in any town where you are visiting. We usually have one in the, you know, bigger towns. And they’ve renovated them very, very nicely and it’s reopened, I think it was mid-November 2024 they reopened. And what they did that I think is very, very smart is that they left space for tables and for people to sit.

And so people, even on a Monday at late December, between Christmas and New Year, you had people enjoying some food, oysters, some wine, we had couscous and a tagine. There’s a couscous tagine kind of type of place, which it was very good. You can enjoy sandwiches, I mean, all sorts of food. And there were people having lunch at Les Halles, which I think is brilliant because most places in France, it’s a place where you go buy food and you get out to cook it.

This, you can do that, there’s some places where you can buy, you know, the cheese, the fish, the normal things that you find at Les Halles, but they also have food vendors and it’s more like a, kind of a food court of thing. And the prices were not super expensive, I think we paid 16 or 17 euros for our lunch, but it was great. It was lovely.

[00:14:49] Elyse: Yes, it was very nice. To our great surprise actually, because on the outside, on the doorways, it says it’s closed on Mondays, but because it’s the holiday and because it was so, what was it? The day before New Year’s Eve, they kept the food court part open. There were quite a few people inside and it was really quite lovely and very, very varied in the foods that you could have. So obviously, you could either eat in or take out, and it was very nice.

And it was also interesting because we did, you know, neither of us really knew Béziers, so we were kind of wandering a little bit in terms of trying to figure out where the things were that we were trying to go see.

The Cathar Massacre and Religious History

[00:15:25] Elyse: And it turns out that it was very close to a church called the Church of the Madeleine, which it is a special church, and we couldn’t get in, unfortunately. That was closed. It was locked up. A very, very, very old church. Parts of the stone on the church goes back to the 1100s and it turns out that this church, not the cathedral, much to my surprise, is the church associated with the terrible massacre that happened to the Cathar, which is part of the, one of the most important episodes in the very long history of the city of Béziers, huh?

[00:16:03] Annie: Right. So, we did two episodes about the Cathars. Once was kind of the story of the crusade against the Albiginien? Albiginois, but I don’t know how to say that in English.

[00:16:17] Elyse: The Cathar from Albi. Yeah, but you’d to really say, you know, I think.

[00:16:21] Annie: So, the crusade against the Cathars, I guess. So we did one episode about that, and the other episode was about Cathar kind of beliefs and why they stood out so much. And I’ll link them in the show notes for this episode. But really, there’s a lot to understand about the area, and this church is you know, it’s a very plain looking church from the outside, but this is where a lot of the population sought refuge. Not just Cathars, because apparently they didn’t have that many Cathars in the town, maybe 500 people out of a, you know, few thousand inhabitants.

The king’s army were not all that particular about who they slaughtered and so they killed a lot of Catholics as well as Cathars. And this is the church where there’s this famous saying, go ahead and explain that.

[00:17:07] Elyse: Well, try to imagine we’re back 800 years. This is the year 1209, and the ruler of this area happens to be the same man as who is the ruler of Carcassonne and Albi, and that is a viscount named Trencavel, that’s the family name. This is the dynasty of the Trencavels. And it turns out that he’s one of these really good guys, you know? There aren’t that many in history that stand out. This young, tolerant, allowed various different religions and different groups of people all lived together in Béziers and Carcassonne.

And when the French armies came to attack to try and get rid of this group, the Cathar, this dissident Christian group, they surrounded Béziers, and you can see now what that meant, you know, when you go there and you see how everything’s up on these steep hills. And of course at the time, I’m sure it was a lot smaller, and so he had everybody come inside the ramparts of the city, and then eventually a lot of people hid inside this church.

And the story is, and I looked up the word to make sure I was spelling it correctly and pronouncing it correctly, apocryphal, a story that’s apocryphal, which means we don’t know, it’s no way of verifying if it’s absolutely true, but it certainly has come down through the centuries, that this huge army is about to attack Béziers. And one of the leaders of the army turns to the man who is the papal representative, who is of course the man in charge of trying to get rid of all of these bad new Christians called the Cathar. And the leader of the army says to him, you know, “How do we know who is Cathar? Because basically everybody looks the same.” And his answer is: ” Kill them all. God will know.”

And this has come down through the centuries as being associated with the massacre of the people in this church in Béziers that began this very terrible long war, the fighting to get rid of the Cathar. So, it is a major event actually in the history, and to my surprise, it was interesting to see that we, I think, Annie, you took a picture of it, I think you put it in the collage, the video collage you did. There’s a plaque on the ground that talks about that event in the year 1209 right in front of the Church of the Madeleine.

So it’s part of the, it’s really part of the old history of the city. It’s a city that’s had its moments.

[00:19:24] Annie: It’s important to note as well that while this was a religious upheaval in many ways, it was also political as are most religious fights. The King of France wanted to take over the Southwest, and it suited him to come invade, essentially. And the king wanted to get rid of this pesky minority religion that attracted a lot of people, and so they joined up and they were pretty much unstoppable.

[00:19:57] Elyse: And of course, one of… Historically, one of the problems and one of the reasons why they did manage to eventually win and take over this whole region, which is a major enormous area, the whole Longue d’Crussion, is because the Viscount de Trencavel, who tried to create a big army to fight against them, he went to his cousin, the Count of Toulouse, and he went to his other cousin who was the Count of Barcelona, who was also the King of Aragon. These were all related, they were all related by marriage, and everything anyway, and asked them to join him in fighting against the French army, and the French papal army, and they both said no.

And so he was left with whatever soldiers and we could imagine, these are knights, 800 years ago, and people that he had, and it was simply not enough to fight against this enormous army. So, you’re absolutely right, it was very much a political thing, and it was also a very much a divide and conquer thing.

And it is a very big part of the mythological and real history of the city of Béziers. But other than that, there were lots of things to see, and part of that was connected, of course, to the Canal du Midi.

Exploring the City: Landmarks and Attractions

[00:21:06] Elyse: As you mentioned, we walked, we had to kind of go back down by car because we really couldn’t deal with going down and coming up on these zillions of steps, unfortunately.

But this old bridge, which is quite beautiful, from which you have this view of the city with the cathedral. Now, the cathedral is all the way up on top, and it really is quite spectacular. And luckily for us, we were about to leave because we thought we couldn’t get in.

Right.

[00:21:33] Annie: Right. We had… We couldn’t find the entrance.

[00:21:35] Elyse: We couldn’t find the entrance. This is very strange. I mean, I think it’s, for some reason, it was just this little side door that was open and the big main doors were closed, and we were kind of like, “Oh, what a shame,” because it’s also a beautiful neighborhood. It’s one of the nicest parts up above, very beautiful, chic little restaurants and shops and very nice apartments. And it’s right next to the Bishop’s Palace, which was turned into a courthouse, and which has now been abandoned by the courts because it’s going to be turned into the big museum of Béziers.

[00:22:07] Annie: Right. So, that’s not done yet, but I think it’s going to be very nice, once they do that. And this big plaza on top around the cathedral has a gorgeous statue of Trencavel, that is of course the hero, a hero in this area. And it also has a statue of Joan of Arc, not with a sword and a halo, but on the pyre.

[00:22:31] Elyse: I didn’t even realize that. That was when you went over there to see it.

Okay. Yes. Yeah.

[00:22:35] Annie: Yes. Yes. And she’s right outside of where you… The side door where you enter the church, and it’s interesting because usually, I mean, Joan of Arc is usually represented on a horse with a sword and a halo. And in this case I saw one like that in a church in Nice as well, where she is tied up. She’s wearing very simple robes and there’s wood under her feet.

So, you know, they’re going to light the pyre.

Yeah.

So, it’s a very interesting, beautiful… And that one is outside the church…. so I recommend you check it out. It’s very nice.

[00:23:10] Elyse: The whole area, the Esplanade, the Place de la Révolution, which is right next to the cathedral, that whole area up on top is just absolutely gorgeous. And there is a view that is fabulous that it… You see in every single direction, I could make out the blue of the water, but you could see the Corbières mountains, you could see the Pyrenees, you could see the vineyards down below. There’s this gorgeous point of view from up there before you actually go inside the cathedral.

[00:23:37] Annie: Yeah, and as far as, kind of, practical matters, if you are coming by car then you can park at Les Halles, for instance. They have two underground parking lots, Les Halles Un, Les Halles Deux. Neither one has electric chargers as far as I can tell, which is silly, because if I had been able to plug in while we were visiting, we wouldn’t have had to stop on the way home. But such is life. They will eventually get chargers everywhere. I’m positive.

But so we parked up there and then we moved the car to go down below to the old bridge and to the… the locks.

[00:24:14] Elyse: And, one of the other things we went past and actually walked into is the old mayor’s office, which it turns out… Do you remember when I said to you there’s a plaque and it talks about the fire? And I was wondering what that was because it was relatively past? Well… So the building that the mayor’s office is in is a Renaissance building, which of course has been somewhat modernized, but it’s basically a building from the 1500s. And it’s a very beautiful façade on the outside, and right in the center there, very close to Les Halles.

And we walked in and there’s this very nice courtyard there with… And then, there’s this list which is, it rather… I found it very impressive or imposing. I don’t know how many people realize that in France during World War I, you know, a third of the men were killed. And there isn’t a village and a town in France that doesn’t have a monument to the dead, specifically about World War I.

And inside the entrance courtyard of the mayor’s office in Béziers, there wasn’t one plaque, there were seven major plaques on the wall. The number of people who were listed, it was really kind of overwhelming to see.

Winemakers’ Revolt

[00:25:20] Elyse: And then, as we were walking out, there was another little plaque on the side that talked about a fire, and there were a list of about maybe 11 or 12 names that were all obviously people who were firemen and things like that. And it turns out that, that particular event, which was at the very beginning of the 20th century, was connected to this other major event in the history of Béziers, which was this incredible insurrection revolt of the winemakers of the region, the whole southwest region of Languedoc-Roussillon in the year 1907.

And one of the things that had happened was that at the very beginning of this turbulent time, a couple of the buildings that were connected to the winemakers had been set on fire. Some of these people died in trying to save buildings in the old city center of Béziers. And so that was a plaque for them on top of everything else.

Because it doesn’t explain what it’s for. I mean, it just gives these people, you know…

Béziers is still, aside from what other economic activities it has, it’s still one of the major centers in the middle of this vast wine-growing region, yeah?

And for many, many years, for maybe a couple of centuries, ever since the, basically the end of the 1600s, the majority of the wine produced in France was from the Languedoc-Roussillon area. I mean, Bordeaux is a smaller area, and it was mostly wines that were more expensive that were being shipped to the English because they controlled most of the Bordeaux area.

And we’re not talking about Champagne, which is a little bit different anyway. But the biggest part of normal table wine production and the wine that everybody used on as a regular basis was around, the whole region around Béziers. And so it became known as the capital of winemaking. Yeah.

And this is part of what happened when there was this huge political problem that developed into an insurrection, and then it culminated in these events that took place in 1907.

Annie’s personal experience in the area

[00:27:20] Annie: Right. Right. And I’ll let you tell us about that in a second, but I have some hystory in the area because I spent many many summers near Valras-Plage with my parents.

Probably it started when I was seven or something, and all the way to 15 or 14 or something, so several summers. And we would spend the whole summer there. What happened is my parents bought a piece of land that used to be a vineyard.

So, they were pulling out the grape production stuff because they couldn’t make any money at it anymore. So this was probably, if I was five, six, seven, it was the early ’70s, okay?

They had sold this piece of land. My mother was always on the lookout for things to buy. She was a good investor. And she had bought this piece of land almost sight unseen, and then first thing we did is we started pulling out all the grapevines, which my dad just rented a kind of a tool for a few days to do that. Then we piled them up and somebody came and got them. There’s a whole story to this.

And then he set up this area with a dry toilet, we had trailers, we had a little place where we could store his tools, and camping beds and things like that. It was like a little campsite, private campsite, I guess. It didn’t have electricity. It didn’t have water. It was really rustic, but it was fantastic because we could go and as soon as school was out, my mom would take us. My dad worked a lot, but my mom would take us and she felt safe there with her three little kids, and we would go as soon as school was out, and then we’d go home two days before school started up again.

So we spent two months there every summer going to the beach every day, all day. It was fantastic. And so occasionally, we went to Béziers to get this or that, but not very much. We mostly spent time at the beach. And it’s true that all the land around us was agricultural land with grapevines, and they were all getting pulled out because they couldn’t make a living at this.

[00:29:26] Elyse: No. They couldn’t… In fact, it’s interesting to know that the decline of the region in terms of being, an important wine-growing region, basically, it began at the very end of the 19th century, and just basically continued until almost the very end of the 20th century. And it has now, of course, changed, because now the quality of the wine is different, and it’s gone back into being a region that has wines that are considered to be good wines, as opposed to just being you know, your basic table stuff, you know?

[00:29:54] Annie: Yeah, they’ve come a long way.

Now, the Corbières wines, there are some that are, they’re very nice. They’ve really put a lot of effort into it, but it used to be like this cheaper wine. But as French people drink less and less wine, and foreigners don’t want to buy cheap, crappy French wine, so they’ve had to increase the quality, and by now it’s pretty good from the Languedoc.

[00:30:17] Elyse: It’s very good.

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The Wine Scandal and Economic Impact

[00:30:20] Elyse: I was so curious about what was the reason for this insurrection, because it’s the kind of thing, if you don’t study this area, you’re not going to know about it. It’s not part of general information that people talk about, things like that. And it turns out that starting at the very end of the 19th century, in the very first decade of the 20th century, there was an overproduction.

At the same time, there was the disease with the phylloxera and there were all these other problems. There was this constant desire, and apparently the government they allowed a certain amount of traffic of putting chemicals into the wine and of putting extra sugar into the wine. And at the same time, they were importing enormous amounts of wine from Algeria.

And this is really interesting. So, what happened was the quality of the wine was going down, and at the same time, there was an importing of so much wine that the prices were going down. So, all of these thousands and thousands of producers could not make a living anymore.

[00:31:17] Annie: Right, so probably they were importing very cheap wine from Algeria and then trying to sell it a little bit more as a French wine.

[00:31:25] Elyse: And not only that, but the government was really, they were turning a… I was going to say a deaf eye. You can’t turn a deaf eye. They were turning a blind eye. Like, we’ve had in the more recent times, you know, there have been scandals about some Italian wines that apparently it was common practice for those people who were producing the worst and the cheapest of these wines to add sugar to them, to add all these chemicals to them, so that basically what was happening was that all of a sudden nobody wanted to buy these wines anymore. Which meant that, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of people whose lives depend on the entire wine industry.

And it culminated in basically what became first some demonstrations, to the growers wanted them to forbid the using of chemicals in wine.

They wanted to reduce the amount of imPaulation of the wine coming… el cheapo wine coming from Algeria and other places. They said, “we’re dying, you know, we have no way of making a living.” And this is… We’re talking about a region that was relatively poor to begin with.

And so they started having demonstrations, and all the local politicians took the side of the wine growers and the peasants, and the shopkeepers took the side of the wine growers and the peasants, because the entire region’s economy basically was dependent on this.

Massive Demonstrations of 1907

[00:32:39] Elyse: And in the process of several months in the year 1907, it culminated in what became massive demonstrations. In May of 1907, there was a demonstration in Béziers with over 300,000 people.

Now, we were just there, aside from their Ramblas, the Avenue Jean-Jaures.

[00:32:57] Annie: Or Paul Riquet, perhaps.

[00:32:58] Elyse: Or is it Riquet?

Well, the statue of the Riquet.

[00:33:00] Annie: Yeah, I think it’s Avenue Paul Riquet.

[00:33:02] Elyse: Trying to imagine 300,000, that’s huge, huge, huge amount of people. Little by little, all of the politicians in the South, and Jean Jaurès among them, of course, who was closer to Toulouse, but all of these politicians sided with all of these producers.

And they went from one city to another demonstrating. And eventually, the huge culminating event was in Montpellier, which of course is the biggest city in the area, and it certainly was at the time, where there were 600,000 people out in the streets.

And the Clemenceau who was president at the time ordered the army to come in And when they didn’t disperse, he actually allowed them to shoot into the crowd.

And a couple of innocent bystanders were killed, including one 14 year old girl. And so it turned into riots that really were about to become a major civil war in the whole southern part of France.

And it was Jean Jaurès and a couple of other politicians who basically convinced Clemenceau, I’m not sure exactly how he felt about all of this, but he was trying to maintain order for the rest of the country and then have a vision of not giving into these demonstrators.

The Wine Revolt’s Lasting Effects

[00:34:18] Elyse: But they convinced him that he had to find a way of reconciling with them by creating a new law that would stop the adulteration of the wine, and at the same time pardon anybody who’d taken place in this insurrection, because otherwise, the country was about to go up in flames.

And it included even a regiment of army that were local boys who were sent to basically stand there with their rifles out, ready to shoot, and who eventually went over to the side of the demonstrators.

I know I was just mentioning to you that one of the things I was reading about yesterday that I found so fascinating about it, this is that, because of this major event which became… in English it’s simply the Wine Revolt of 1907. There’s a much more folkloric name for it in French.

But because of that, they made rules, for instance, that army can never be stationed where they’re from so that they don’t patronize, you know, and fraternize with the local people. That police, the Gendarmerie, for instance, which is part of the national police, can never stay in one place longer than two, three years so that they don’t buddy up with people too much, and all of this comes out of this major period of civil unrest in 1907.

French Colonization and Algerian Wine

[00:35:29] Annie: Yeah. Yeah. It just complicate it. Because if you think about it, when French people colonised Algeria, Algeria was not a wine producing part of the world, but French people brought in wine because they wanted wine.

[00:35:44] Elyse: That was a good place to grow it, I guess.

[00:35:46] Annie: They probably found favorable growing circumstances. And then when the French left, so the Algerians are left with all these grape vines and they don’t drink wine. That’s not their thing. And so, they wanted to sell it abroad, you know, which complicated things. And a lot of, like you mentioned at the very beginning, they imported a lot of workers from Algeria, and so these people had ties to the wineries back home and it created a massive problem.

[00:36:19] Elyse: The 20th century was a very complicated part of history for this part of France, really, for economically…

Exploring Béziers: Historical Sites and Canal du Midi

[00:36:26] Elyse: Now, some of the more beautiful things that have to do with this area are connected clearly to the old buildings, the beautiful old city, and then the Canal du Midi, which is really just one of the most remarkable things. And I am so glad we did kind of turn around in circles for a while, but I am so glad that we eventually did find the famous…

What do you mean? What?

The nine locks of the Fontserin, which are so gorgeous. I was so sorry that we couldn’t stay longer there, you know, it was the end of the day. It’s a World UNESCO Heritage Site, it’s very close to the city, it’s down below obviously. What happened was that as they were finishing the Canal du Midi, and of course, unfortunately, all of this was really finished just a few months after Riquet died. It was his son who was responsible for overseeing the final work. In this particular part of the land, there’s too much of a difference in height between one part and another. It’s over 21 meters of difference, which is a fair amount.

And so the engineers, I mean, we’re talking about the 1680s, okay? We’re talking about that long ago. They managed to figure out how in the space of less than what is it? Maybe 100 meters, I can’t… I don’t… 200 meters.

[00:37:43] Annie: They probably spread out along 500 meters or perhaps a little more. Yeah.

[00:37:49] Elyse: But we have nine locks, literally, and each one is just big enough for the barge to get into. You close both sides. And this is how they created this so that the boats coming both ways basically could go from where it was sea level to where it was 21 meters high. And you couldn’t do it in just one or two locks, so they did nine of these locks.

[00:38:10] Annie: Yeah.

[00:38:11] Elyse: Six of them are still in operation.

It’s beautiful.

[00:38:13] Annie: … It’s beautiful. Lots of people walking around with their dogs, their strollers, their… And also, we should say that Pierre Paul Riquet was born in Béziers.

That’s the city of his birth, you know? He was born in 1609.

Jean Moulin and Béziers’ Rich History

[00:38:27] Annie: The other illustrious person that was born in Béziers is Jean Moulin, the resistant, that we did an episode about.

[00:38:35] Elyse: It’s an important city.

It’s an important city. And there is a very small… unfortunately closed because it’s the holidays and it was a Monday, but there is a very small museum for Jean Moulin, which is in, apparently, the house that his father had in Béziers. And it has a lot of his artwork, because in spite of everything else, on top of being the major resistant and real hero, he was also an artist.

And so he liked to draw. A lot of his work is kept by his father in the house.

The history of Béziers is rich, it’s old, it’s varied, it’s got all of this beautiful nature with the locks, with the canal, with the walks along the river, and then it has all of this, which always fascinates me, the old, tiny, narrow little windy streets in the old upper bridge.

[00:39:18] Annie: Yes. And it really has a lot of those in the hyper center, and some of those I wouldn’t want to live there because the houses are so close together that you don’t get a lot of sunlight, you know? They’re too close together.

[00:39:31] Elyse: They’re real medieval.

[00:39:32] Annie: Yes, they are medieval, but the city is just really interesting. And I can only see it gentrifying and improving over the next few years because they really love their mayor in Béziers. And their mayor is a complicated guy.

[00:39:50] Elyse: Yeah. He’s a very complicated… Did you know that he was one of the founders of Reporters sans Frontières?

Oui, oui.

Yeah.

The Enigmatic Mayor of Béziers

[00:39:56] Elyse: Okay, everybody out there, we need to mention this. The mayor is a man named Ménard, Robert Ménard. He is a very interesting man. This is his third term. He is right wing, rather right wing.

[00:40:06] Annie: Right, but he started as left wing.

[00:40:08] Elyse: But he started as left wing, and he was one of the founders of what is an incredible thing called the Reporters without Borders, which is an incredible organization that defends the freedom of press and journalism everywhere in the world. And somehow, over the course of… Well, he’s in his, what? His early 60s. Over the course of the last 35, I don’t know how many years, his political positions shifted from being really left wing to being more, and more, and more right wing. He is the mayor of Béziers, and he is uncontested as the mayor of Béziers.

[00:40:47] Annie: People love him.

[00:40:48] Elyse: People love him. People love him. And he has been responsible for most of the projects that help the gentrification, for bringing in people, for doing all these things to make Béziers a nicer place to live. Because when he took it over, it was really in bad condition and was economically depressed, the whole city center was falling apart.

Of course, it’s much easier to deal with creating new outer things like the huge shopping center than to work on fixing up things because it takes a lot more money to renovate an old building than to build from scratch, in a way. But he is, he’s a very strange and enigmatic person. Everybody in France knows about Ménard because…

[00:41:26] Annie: Well, he’s well-spoken.

If you hear him on the radio, he makes sense. And also he’s a… Okay, so he’s a populist, okay? There’s no question that he’s a populist, but he’s the kind of populist who’s not trying to take advantage of the situation to make a bloody fortune for himself, which is what most populists do.

He actually is using the funds that he can raise up to help the population, all of the population. So I can forgive him for having kind of narrow-minded ideas politically because he’s actually doing good things for the city.

Well… you know…

[00:42:08] Elyse: I mean, he’s a bit of a paradox because he has some more and more he has ideas that he used to attack. In other words, he has ideas about, you know, identity and things like that.

Well, and you see it because in a lot of places, but only French people would notice this, like, he renamed part of the plaza where, big plaza in front of the cathedral, he renamed a section of it after a priest who was assassinated in Brittany by wannabe jihadists.

The poor man had a horrible death. Some young men entered his church and beheaded him. And so he renamed the plaza after him. And there’s a plaque that says, you know, where they killed, you know, “Jihadists killed a priest,” blah, blah, blah.

He put a nativity in the plaza of City Hall. It’s a beautiful little nativity. He also put a menorah though.There’s also a menorah up because he’s very much in support of Israel. There’s a little kind of a wannabe newspaper-ish thingy that they put on billboards in the city. And if you read it, which I did, at the very bottom, it says that 78% of ecologists, so Green Party people buy their Christmas decorations from China.

Which, in a sense is neither here nor there, because if you can find them anywhere else, you know? But it is true. He’s very enigmatic, I must say.

It’s strange because at the same time he is really helping Béziers improve and it’s bringing more people in who have money, which helps of course the city. And at the same time, I am always curious about someone whose political ideas shift so radically in their lifetime, you know.

[00:43:59] Annie: Well, yeah. But he went from doing good in a socialist kind of way, to doing good in a populist kind of way.

But at least he’s not a kleptomaniac. As far as we know, he has never profited personally from his position.

It’s possible that in 50 years we’ll figure out that we were wrong about that, you know. Populist often rob people blind.

[00:44:26] Elyse: I’m just hoping that since it doesn’t look like he’s about to leave as mayor of the city, I did look up the statistics because I was sort of curious, so 26% of the population is Arab. And a good part of that is young people, and of course part of the problem with young people is they need work, you know?

[00:44:42] Annie: Well, of course anywhere.

[00:44:43] Elyse: France is a complicated place right now in relation to things like that. And Béziers is typical of an area that has depended on agricultural work and immigrant workers for a long time, and it has to enter into the 21st century and change things. So, he’s probably the right person for the moment in a place like that, you know?

[00:45:01] Annie: At any rate, politics aside, the place is very pleasant.

[00:45:06] Elyse: And very interesting.

[00:45:07] Annie: Interesting, pleasant. I recommend if you go, it would be a pretty good place to base yourself out of if you want to visit the Languedoc. You know, from there, you could do day trips to Narbonne, to Montpellier, to Sete, going south to Collioure.

Mm-hmm.

[00:45:27] Elyse: It’s a little far to Collioure, but…

But for the coast, there are a couple of things nearby, I’d just like to mention them because of course there’s the Oppidum of Enserune, which is really fabulous, which is right along the coast. Now, these are things unfortunately you really do need a car for, you know?

Exactly. And it closed.

But it’s absolutely gorgeous. It has a museum. This is in the middle of the vineyards and the pine trees, which is, you know, a landscape that I love. And it’s really an oppidum which is, you know, it was a Gallic fortification before the Romans came, and it’s really fascinating to see what they’ve done there with the museum.

And also, there are two abbeys nearby. One is Fopntcaude and the other one is Valemagne, which are beautiful, absolutely beautiful. These are all very, very similar and Valemagne. Right outside, between Béziers and Montpellier.

[00:46:13] Annie: Okay. You put that in the show notes, right?

[00:46:16] Elyse: And the Château Laurens, which I visited with my husband in Agde.

Château Laurens.

Yeah, and which is this fantasy, built by this very rich man at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century, that’s just reopened. It’s one of these like gorgeous del- delirious things, you know?

It’s really worth visiting.

One thing we didn’t mention, we mentioned briefly the Rambla, the, what, so they call it Rambla Biterroise. A rambla is a concept that’s very important to the Spanish and Catalans and of course, French Catalan country is not very far from Béziers.

And they have this long avenue with the center of it is pedestrian you have trees. Yeah. And Béziers went through a period where it wanted to be Paris. And so they kind of widened that one avenue, Avenue Paul Riquet, and they have buildings that kind of look Haussmannian, a few of them anyway.

They also built this park, Le Parc des Poetes, which it kind of looks like a Paris park, you know, it’s a hill. It kind of looks like the Buttes-Chaumont.

And I’ve heard people from Paris say that it’s actually very much nicer than the Buttes-Chaumont, which great. We didn’t have time. We only had a day.

So, that’s the thing. If you are going to go visit Béziers, I would recommend you arrive in the afternoon, spend the night, spend most of the day the next day, at least, to just see Béziers. And then if you are going to stay there to, I don’t know, as a place to center yourself out of to go see the rest of the area. You don’t absolutely need a car to see many things, but to see some of the things you need a car.

If you have children with you, you could go to Valras Plage, which has totally changed. We went, we spent an hour. No, not even an hour. I was hoping to charge and I, somebody beat me to it. Dang it.

The waterfront is very nice. It’s beautiful sandy beach. There’s little restaurants along there. It’s a very nice beach. So if you’re with kids, it’s a great place to spend a few days, just enjoying the beach and doing day trips, going to see… But I don’t think Valras Plage has a train. So for that you need a car.

Yeah, you need a car.

Some places do, some places don’t. So just check them. I know that to go to Sete, Montpelier, Narbonne, Collioure, train.

You could always take a train.

But Valras, mm-mm, no train.

Culinary Delights of Béziers

[00:48:42] Elyse: One last thing. I didn’t really make it a list on the show notes, but it’s… There’s really great food there, and a lot of it… of course comes from the sea.

[00:48:50] Annie: But of course, there’s also a lot of, like the mayor was born in Oran in Algeria. So, there’s couscous.

[00:48:57] Elyse: It’s wonderful Mediterranean cooking and lots of oysters, and lots of shellfish, and lots of the tielle, which I absolutely love.

[00:49:06] Annie: Yeah, Tielle de Sète.

I don’t love, I find them too dry.

[00:49:10] Elyse: Add a little sauce to it.

But it’s really a great area for food and it’s not that expensive in… compared to some other parts.

[00:49:16] Annie: No, really. If you compare the prices in Béziers compared to Nice, uh…

[00:49:21] Elyse: Right.

[00:49:22] Annie: It’s night and day. Night and day. And in Béziers you don’t have people on top of each other like you’re doing around Nice.

But I’m talking to somebody who likes a bit of land or, you know, a bit of a garden, whatever. I think you can do that in Béziers. In Nice, like good luck finding a place. They’re on top of each other. They’re crazy over there.

[00:49:44] Elyse: For the moment, I think that Béziers has not suffered from overtourism.

[00:49:48] Annie: No, it really hasn’t. But you know, if you’re exploring the Southwest and possibly a place to call your own, I think the Béziers area is a good place to take a look at.

[00:49:59] Elyse: The oldest city in France!

[00:50:01] Annie: That’s right. We’ve decided. Sold. It’s the oldest city in France.

[00:50:07] Elyse: It’s the oldest city in France.

[00:50:09] Annie: Merci beaucoup, Elyse!

[00:50:12] Elyse: Au revoir.

Au revoir.

Thank You Patrons

[00:50:19] Annie: Again, I want to thank my patrons for giving back and supporting the show. Patrons get several exclusive rewards for doing so, you can see them at patreon.com/JoinUs.

And a special shout out this week to my new Join Us in France champions: Patti, Darlene, Kathy G., Chubba, Colleen Butera, Kelly Dannar, Joy, Trisha Chaffrey, and Mary Jane Jacques.

And thank you, Steven Struck, for upgrading your pledge to Groupie du Podcast, and for having been a suporter for a very long time. Also, thank you, Sherri Duskey Rinker, for upgrading your support to Fou de France yearly.

And about episode 535, Sherri said: ‘I really enjoyed this episode. It made my long drive today much more enjoyable’. And I love to hear that you take me along on your drives.

And also thank you, Jay Hardcastle, for editing your pledge up to Groupie du Podcast. Jay has been a patron since 2020, which is wonderful.

And lastly for today, my thanks alsoto Tamara Clahan for upgrading her pledge to Groupie du Podcast, merci, merci to all of you.

Would you join them too? You can do it for as little as $3 a month, but if you can afford it, I would love to have you pledge more so you have access to even more rewards.

Go to patreon.com/joinus, and to support Elyse go to patreon.com/ElysArt.

Zoom Meetings with Patrons

[00:52:04] Annie: This week I had my zoom meetings with patrons. It’s always a joy and a boost to talk to you face to face. Lovely to see you.

New VoiceMap Tours

[00:52:13] Annie: If you listen to this episode, as soon as it comes out, I’ve just arrived in Paris where I’ll spend two weeks working on a new VoiceMap tour.

Perhaps two, if I’m very efficient. I love those tours. They are my babies, just as much as these episodes are. And you may think, oh, perhaps she makes a killing on those tours, right? Not at all. They are actually pretty cheap to buy, which is my fault. I could raise the prices. And of all of the things I work on, this is probably the least profitable.

But I keep making them because I love sharing the stories and places of Paris. I don’t think there’s a better way to tour a city than at your leisure, with earbuds in your ears, with someone who loves the place, tell you about it and guides you through it.

When I go somewhere I don’t know, I look for a VoiceMap tour because the technology makes it easy to get fully immersed and savor the moment. It so beats bumming around, looking for information on Google Maps or whatever you’re used to doing.

At any rate, I’ll be enjoying Paris imagining you also enjoying Paris, and it’s a joy to do that. And because it’s not as profitable as other work I do in my podcast journey, I would have stopped doing these long ago if it weren’t for Patricia Perry, who is such a good friend and lets me stay at her apartment in the 15e Arrondissement, a wonderful part of Paris as well. So thank you, Patricia.

Podcast listeners get a big discount for buying these tours from my website, especially if you’re going to get a bundle. But if you buy directly from me, it is a manual process. I’m not a robot. It might take a few hours for you to get the codes.

So if you’re in big hurry, just get them from the VoiceMap app directly. And if you want to read more reviews of these tours, go to joinusinfrance.com/VMR. That stands for VoiceMap Reviews.

If you’re planning a trip to France and you need personalized advice, hire me as your itinerary consultant, choose the Bonjour service or the VIP service if you need a detailed follow up guide after our Zoom call.

Ready to start? Visit joinusinfrance.com/boutique and follow the simple email instructions.

Paris Marathon

[00:54:33] Annie: All right, let’s talk about what’s coming up in Paris the next few months. The Paris Marathon is coming to Paris on April 13th. If you are going to be running it in 2025, I would love to record an episode with you about it.

Reach out to me annie@joinusinfrance.Com. And I don’t think it’s too late to sign up if you’re into that sort of grueling sports event.

The European Museum Night

[00:54:59] Annie: The European Museum Night is also coming up on May 17th and 18th. There are going to be guided tours, live shows, screenings, tastings, and more. As night falls, more than a thousand museums across France wake up to offer visitors original and friendly artistic experiences as part of the European Museum Night.

This is a free event for anyone who shows up, but you will not have access to the whole museum, only to the events going on that night.

The Bordeaux Wine Festival

[00:55:32] Annie: The Bordeaux Wine Festival is a wonderful event on the banks of the Garonne River. From June 19th until June 22. If I’m around, I will definitely go. I would love to see that.

They showcase Bordeaux wines, but also wines from the entire region of the Nouvelle Aquitaine, and also local produce. This provides visitors with an exceptional chance to encounter wine growers and vendors who are eager to share their passion.

Also, it’s an excellent opportunity to explore some of the most esteemed names of Bordeaux wines, including Saint-Emilion-Pomerol-Fronsac, Medoc wines, Graves-Sauternes, and Mouton-Cadet, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, among others, you get a tasting pass so you can enjoy trying some of the wonderful wines as well.

For the gourmet food part of this event, you’ll be able to enjoy local cheeses, charcuterie, duck, artisanal ice cream, the delightful canneles from Bordeaux, and fabulous oysters from the Arcachon Basin.

You’ll also be able to visit three amazing historic sailing ships. Le Beleme, that’s a French three mast ship, El Galeón, a replica of Spanish galleons that you’ve heard about in pirate stories, and the Santa María Manuela, an amazing Portugues four mast fishing vessel. But an old one.

A Celebration of Cézanne

[00:57:01] Annie: And if you’re coming to France anytime this summer, you have a big event to look forward to. They are calling it Cézanne 2025 and it will take place between June 28th and October 12th. Here’s what I found out about it.

In 2025, Provence is preparing to celebrate one of its greatest artistic heroes, Paul Cézanne. The Cézanne 2025 event invites visitors to discover Aix-en-Provence and the surrounding area through a journey into the world of post impressionist master and precursor of modern art.

It’s a unique experience combining exhibitions, art trails in the heart of nature, and the Provence vineyards.

Much of this will take place in and around Aix-en-Provence where he spent 40 years of his life. The exhibit is going to be called Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan and the Orsay Museum will lend many of its best Cézanne paintings to various museums around Aix-en-Provence.

It’ll be nice for these paintings to go home for a while, anyway.

I’ll put a link in the show notes for those of you who want more information.

The Tour de France

[00:58:17] Annie: And last but not least, the Tour de France, of course, is going to start on July 5th and end on August 3rd. This year it’ll be exclusively in France, and they’ll cover 3,320 kilometers in 21 stages.

And the Women’s Tour de France is going to be starting on July 26th in Vannes and end in Châtel in the Alps on August 3rd as well.

So both tours end on the same day this year, which I think is a great idea.

Personnal Note

[00:58:47] Annie: And on a personal note, I’d like to share that I had a whirlwind trip to Utah last week to attend my father in law’s funeral. He was a wonderful human being, a gifted musician and composer, beloved by all in his community. So many people attended, I was astounded. And this was truly the best funeral I’ve ever attended. There was family closeness, music, beautiful tributes given by the people who knew him and loved him most. It was wonderful. He died peacefully at age 84, and I’m certain he will be remembered fondly forever, and I will miss him.

My thanks to podcast editors Anne and Christian Cotovan, who produced the transcripts.

Next week on the podcast

[00:59:32] Annie: Next week on the podcast, an episode with MasterChef’s Andrew Prior, who loves French food. He got me salivating.

Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you join me next time, so we can look around France together. Au revoir.

Copyright

[00:59:48] Annie: The Join Us in France travel podcast is written, hosted, and produced by Annie Sargent, and Copyright 2025 by AddictedToFrance. It is released under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives license.

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Transcript for Episode 536: Béziers Travel Guide