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It is a 300 year-old monument that stretches from Toulouse to the Mediterranean Sea - a water highway, bordered by plane-trees and stone pines, enduringly inscribed on the Languedoc landscape.
The Midi
or South of France, a geographically
ill-defined region, is historically rich, but devoid of large rivers. It eventually fell to Pierre-Paul Riquet, a rich tax collector of Louis XIV (the Sun King), to realise the dreams of the kings of
France and the Romans before them.
Riquet excavated an artificial navigable river, capturing the abundant waters of the Montagne Noire, a mountainous region on the edge of the Massif Central. The salt-tax farmer
was made a baron by the Sun King,
but he sank all his fortune into what
can only be described as a Pharaonic work.
"'lt could be said in the world that I have made a canal to drown myself and all my family in", he wrote. He was to die a ruined man before the canal was inaugurated...
Stéphane Thépot
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