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Montpellier is one of the beautiful cities of southern France with its many nice churches, buildings, streets and squares. A city center lined with cafes, where the cuisine is tasty and where there are many and very varied things to look at in the mild Mediterranean climate.
The long and exciting history of the city has given it a number of interesting buildings and monuments, which are scattered in the city center and outside the heart of the picturesque old town. In many places, the oldest neighborhoods are like a maze, that you just have to explore.
Place de la Comédie is the center of modern and vibrant Montpellier. Here, inhabitants, trams, culture and shopping meet, and from here there is easy access to Place Royale du Peyrou, Montpellier’s Cathedral, the city’s two preserved medieval towers from the former fortifications and the Musée Fabre art museum, where works of great masters can be enjoyed.
The area around Place Royale du Peyrou is a special area. Here you will find elegant architecture and a beautiful city plan, where the square itself and the triumphal arch to the east are a few of the city’s gems. The equestrian statue of king Louis XIV is at the center of the square, and from here you can see the water tower Château d’Eau to the west.
A visit to Montpellier is an experience that combines the metropolis with the French Mediterranean atmosphere in a lovely climate. From the city center, there are just a few kilometers to the Mediterranean waves, many golf courses, varied and fascinating landscapes and other major cultural cities such as Nîmes, Arles and Avignon.
The beautifully landscaped park and promenade Place Royale du Peyrou was laid out almost like a colossal terrace over the city, and the place is the favorite breathing space of many Montpellier residents. The main part of the facility was completed in 1774 and was destroyed during the French Revolution and subsequently restored.
In the center of the square stands an equestrian statue of King Louis XIV. It was originally set up in 1718 and erected by the states of the Languedoc region. During the French Revolution, it was melted down into cannons in Lyon. The statue today is from 1828.
In the western part of the large square is the Water Tower/Château d’Eau building, which was built in 1768 by Henri Pitot. It was built as an imposing termination for the water supply from the Saint Clement Aqueduct/Aqueduc Saint-Clément. At the foot of the tower there is a terrace that rises above the square. From here there is a fine view towards Montpellier and not least over the countryside to the west.
The Porte du Peyrou is Montpellier’s great triumphal arch, which was erected in 1691 as a tribute to King Louis XIV. The Arc de Triomphe was built where one of the city’s gates used to stand, and the inspiration came from the Porte Saint-Denis in Paris. Porte du Peyrou’s dimensions are impressive. The height is 15 meters and the width 18 meters.
The reliefs on the arch were inserted in 1715 and depict four events of the reign of Louis XIV, told in allegories: the capture of the Walloon city of Namur, the coronation of Louis the Victorious, the digging of the Canal du Midi and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
On the outskirts of Montpellier’s old center lies the city’s mighty cathedral with its two towers dominating the surroundings. The church was begun in 1364 as a minor chapel for the monastery of Monastère-Collège Saint-Benoît Saint-Germain, founded by Pope Urban V.
In connection with the relocation of the area’s archbishop’s seat from Maguelone to Montpellier in 1536, a significant expansion was initiated. A few remains of the fortified medieval church can be seen, such as the small towers in front of the facade.
Throughout both the 17th century and the 19th century, major renovations were carried out. The result was that the length of the church today is 113 meters with an internal length of 95 meters, while the height reaches 28.50 meters in the nave.
At the entrance in Rue du Cardinal Cabrières you can see the marks of shots fired by royalist troops in the early 19th century, and before that the church had been partially destroyed during the religious wars between Protestants and Catholics in the 16th century. Inside there are stained glass windows from the 19th century and Sébastian Bourbon’s masterpiece from 1621, which shows a royal succession.
The complex’s monastery was dissolved during the French Revolution, and the monastic buildings atop the cathedral now house the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montpellier. Between the buildings is the Court of Honor/Cour d’Honneur, from which there is a beautiful view of the cathedral building and its towers.
Place de la Comédie is the central square and the most popular meeting place in Montpellier. It was established in 1755 and named after the theater that was previously located here. The theater burned in both 1785, 1789 and 1881 and has today been replaced by the Opéra National de Montpellier.
In the center of the square stands the fountain De Tre Gratier/Trois Grâces from Greek mythology. It was executed by the sculptor Étienne d’Antoine in 1790 and shows Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia, daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, who represent joy and glory. Around the square are cafés and restaurants in a string of beautiful buildings.
Musée Fabre is a large art museum, and it houses one of France’s finest art collections. It was founded in 1825 by the local artist Francois Xavier Fabre through a major donation which supplemented the town’s smaller collection of paintings. Fabre’s example was followed by others such as Antoine Valedau, who donated a number of works by Flemish and Dutch masters.
Here, for example, there are many paintings from the 15th-18th centuries, and the artists behind them include Peter Paul Rubens, Pieter Brueghel the Younger and a number of Frenchmen. Among later works, Frédéric Bazille is represented, among others. The museum’s collection also includes sculptures.
Since 1828, the museum has been housed in the mansion Hôtel de Masilian, which was built in the 18th century. After a special donation, part of the collection also includes the mansion Hôtel de Cabrières Sabatier d’Espeyran and all its contents.
The Aqueduct de Saint-Clément is an aqueduct that was built as part of the 14 kilometer long aqueduct that supplied the water tower at the Place Royale du Peyrou with water from the Saint-Clément spring.
The aqueduct was completed in 1776 and was a large building that, with its numerous arches, cut monumentally through the city from the west. The preserved aqueduct is 800 meters long and 22 meters high. The fall along the aqueduct was 28 centimeters for every kilometre, and the source thus rises only about four meters higher than the end point Château d’Eau.
The water supply from the Saint-Clément spring provided drinking water and also made it possible to build some of the fountains that can still be found in Montpellier today. These are the Fontaine de Trois Grâces (Place de la Comédie), Fontaine de Cybele (Place Chabaneau) and Fontaine des Licornes (Place de la Canourgue).
Montpellier’s botanical garden is the oldest in France and among the oldest in Europe. It was established under King Henri IV in 1593, and they became a model for many later botanical plants in France.
The garden belongs to the city’s university, and on the approximately five hectares there are, among other things, tropical greenhouses, a 19th-century orangery and a lovely English landscape garden.
This chapel and pharmacy is a complex whose history began in 1622, when a group of women started a major charitable work that later resulted in a number of facilities, a house of worship and a hostel.
The local pharmacy is a museum, and it stands like a time warp from bygone centuries with many jars and other furnishings. The museum consists of two rooms showing 18th and 19th century pharmacies.
The Musée de l’histoire de Montpellier is an urban history museum housed in the now former church, Notre Dame de Table. The museum is actually located in the church’s Romanesque crypt from the 9th century, and here the town’s development from its foundation to the present day is portrayed in an exciting way.
Montpellier is a city that has as many as two opera houses and with a distance of only a few hundred meters between them. On the Place de la Comédie is the national opera, a status it received in 2002. The opera house was built in richly ornamented Italian style and was completed in 1888. The architect was Joseph-Marie Cassien-Bernard, who was a student of Charles Garnier.
Both the outside and the inside of the opera house are beautifully decorated. In the large foyer, for example, there are eight frescoes that symbolize dance, history, comedy, music, pastoral, poetry, song and tragedy. There are two halls in the opera, which have space for 1,200 and 350 spectators respectively.
The Tour de la Babote is one of the two preserved towers from the city wall that surrounded Montpellier with walls and 25 towers in the Middle Ages. The tower was built in the 12th century and its name comes from the Occitan word babota, meaning ghost. It was said that the tower was haunted, and therefore Tour de la Babote was a close term.
In 1745, the Royal Academy of Sciences set up an observatory in the tower, which thereby became a meeting place for the area’s astronomers. It has continued that role; now, however, with another astronomy organization as a resident.
If you are at the Tour de la Babote, you can walk the approximately 100 meters along Boulevard de l’Observatoire to Place Edouard Adam, where a very beautifully executed trompe l’oeil is painted on a house facade, i.e. an image that acts as a visual illusion.
The Esplanade park, along with the former military area Champ de Mars, is a favorite place to stroll in the city. The park opened in its current size in 1900, and it is very cozy here with the finely landscaped lakes, fountains and elegant avenues. The area is immediately adjacent to the central Place de la Comédie and is therefore a popular place for strolling.
Antigone is a district that was created in the 1980s by the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. Streets, squares, activities, transport and so on were created with the thoughts of creating a modern neighborhood with all that that entailed. The general impression is of symmetrical structures, a series of open squares and imposing buildings located around an east-west axis.
Antigone was built on the old barracks area of Joffre, of which only the citadel has been preserved to this day. The style is monumental neoclassicism, where details and dimensions are made colossal.
The axis, about a kilometer in length, runs from the Place du Nombre d’Or to the river Lez. From west to east, the squares Place du Millénaire, Place de Zeus and Place de Théssalie are passed before reaching the final semi-arch of the Esplanade de l’Europe, which opens towards Lez.
From here you can see the Hôtel de la Région (Avenue de la Pompignane 201) on the other side of the river. The Hôtel de la Region was also designed by Ricardo Bofill and it is the administration of the Languedoc-Roussillon region.
Carnon is a town that has been built on the strip of land between the lakes off Montpellier and the Mediterranean Sea. There are classy beaches here, and with a tram and shuttle bus you can throw yourself into the waves along many kilometers of sand after only a short time from the city center, as in only a few big cities.
Château de la Piscine is a château that was built in the 18th century as a retreat for the wealthy. In those days, the castle was far from the hustle and bustle of the city in the center of Montpellier. The town has grown, and today the castle is no longer in the countryside. You cannot visit the castle, but it is a beautiful sight, not least to be enjoyed from the open French-style park that surrounds it.
Arles is a southern French city that was founded in the 5th century BC. by Greeks who called it Theline. Soon after, Theline was conquered by Celtic tribes and renamed Arelate. In the year 123 BC the city became Roman, and it flourished not least after the city had supported Julius Caesar against Pompey.
In the 4th and 5th centuries, the city was visited several times by the emperors of Rome, it became an important administrative city in the western part of the empire, and mighty buildings were erected here. Arles was also an important port city at this time.
Béziers is a beautiful southern French city whose old center is high above the River Orb and the Canal du Midi and only about ten kilometers from the Mediterranean Sea. Béziers was founded in 575 BC, making it one of France’s oldest cities. Later, Béziers became a Roman city with the name Colonia Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum, and an amphitheater and other structures were built in it. The Colonia also exported wine to the capital, Rome.
Throughout the 9th and 12th centuries, Béziers was the seat of the viscounty of the same name, and the city’s viscounts ruled a large area around the city. At the beginning of the 13th century, the massacre in Béziers took place. It was a military operation that happened during the Albigensian Crusades and the massacre was a bloodbath that refers to the mass murder committed to destroy the Cathars. Béziers was defeated in July 1209 by a crusading army led by Arnaud Amaury.
The Pont du Gard is an impressive Roman aqueduct that spans the River Gard in a well-preserved manner, from which the name Gard-Broen/Pont du Gard comes. The construction dates from the century AD and was part of a 50 kilometer long aqueduct that carried water from the Eure springs at Uzés to the city of Nîmes, which the Romans called Nemausus. Over the 50 kilometres, the water only had a drop of 17 metres, which was 34 centimeters for every metre, and that says something about the precision with which the Romans built. The facility could divert 20,000 m³ of water per day.
From the 3rd century, the aqueduct was not maintained, and from the 8th century, it could no longer transport water to the city. Stone was used for other structures, but the aqueduct itself has survived largely intact.
The aqueduct is 275 meters long and 49 meters high. It consists of three floors, the lowest of which has 6 arches, is 142 meters long, 22 meters high and 6 meters thick. The middle level has 11 arches, is 242 meters long, 20 meters high and 4 meters wide, while the upper and former water-conducting level has 47 arches, is 275 meters long, 7 meters high and 3 meters thick. The bridge next to the aqueduct itself was built in 1743, and on it you can see many old scratches and years in the stones.
On the eastern side of the aqueduct there is an interesting visitor center where there are various exhibits. Of these, not least the story of the Pont du Gard itself is worth a visit.
Nîmes is a city in southern France in the Languedoc-Roussillon region. The place was inhabited by Celts before it in the 100s BC. became part of the Roman province of Narbonnensis. The area’s main road led through the city, which in the Roman Empire was called Colonia Nemausa, and which in the time of Emperor Augustus was the regional capital and home to around 60,000 inhabitants.
The Romans constructed many buildings in and around the city, such as the city’s amphitheater and the Pont du Gard aqueduct. After the Romans, the Visigoths and Moors arrived, before Louis VIII conquered the city in 1226, and it became part of France in 1259.
Route de Carnon, Lattes
carrefour.fr
Allée Jules Milhau
galerieslafayette.com
Place du Polygone
polygone.com
Rue Foch, Rue St-Guilhem, Rue de la Loge, Grand’Rue Jean Moulin, Rue des Etuves, Place de la Comédie, Rue de l’Aiguillerie
Galilee Planéarium
Odysseum, Allée Ulysse
planetarium-galilee.com
Mare Nostrum
Odysseum, Allée Ulysse
aquariummarenostrum.fr
Montpellier Lunaret Zoo
50 Avenue Agropolis
zoo.montpellier.fr
Serre Amazonienne
50 Agropolis Avenue
zoo.montpellier.fr
Plages du Carnon
Carnon
In the late 900s, only a few people lived in the area between ancient Via Domitia and the Mosson area. It was during this time that Knight Guilhem was entrusted with the present area around Montpellier in recognition of his loyalty and general efforts to the regent.
Over the following decades, the Guilhem family built a smaller dwelling, and they built, among other things, a fortress and a church.
Guilhem’s ambitious plan for the city attracted people, and the city grew over the years in both population and prosperity.
The first thoughts of independence for the city spread in Montpellier around 1100, but the thoughts came to an abrupt end when Count Guilhem IV in 1143 stopped a revolt from Montpellier’s knights. Guilhem also had Pope Alexander III’s support for this use of power.
The events were the starting point for renewed economic growth in the city, and foreign traders settled in increasing numbers here. Montpellier, among other things, exported textiles to large parts of the Mediterranean.
With the financial success of the merchants, the demands for increased freedom and rights increased. They got that in 1204 after a marriage between Aragon’s Pedro II and Marie of Montpellier. Pedro II received Montpellier as a dowry.
The wedding ended the Guilhem family’s dominance in Montpellier and a new and very Republican form of government was established. The city gained significantly more rights, which meant, for example, that the city itself could elect twelve reigning consuls each year.
New and expanded city walls were also constructed so that the entire city could be assembled within the same area. The construction gave Montpellier’s old town the egg shape that can be recognized on map today. Back then, there were both walls and defense towers around the city.
Montpellier’s trade flourished, and not least spices brought prosperity. For these goods, the city was the market place for the entire French kingdom.
As a trading town, Montpellier introduced a new currency, and culturally and intellectually, the city developed tremendously with, among other things, several new institutions and a population that numbered about 40,000 people before the plague.
In 1180, Guilhem VIII of Montpellier had allowed everyone to teach medicine, and it marked the beginning of a great recovery in knowledge that has ever benefited the city.
Around 1220, Montpellier’s medical and legal faculties were established by Cardinal Konrad von Urach, and with this further build-up in the field of knowledge, prosperity continued to rise, and the city eventually became particularly interesting for the region’s rulers to control.
King Philippe le Bel bought the Montpellier area in 1293 by the Bishop of Maguelone, and he then established a number of regional administrative institutions in the city, and the city’s prosperity continued. Formally, however, the city and area were still under the crown of Aragon.
It didn’t take many years before the plague ravaged the area. It happened in the mid-1300s, and King Aragon of Jaime III of Mallorca sold the city and area to France’s King Philippe VI for 120,000 gold crowns.
France’s takeover of Montpellier marked the beginning of an almost uninterrupted 200-year decline in the city, which had hitherto been one of the absolute leading French cities.
However, there were also some bright spots for the city. Religiously, Pope Urban VIII gave the city a monastery dedicated to St. Peter in the 1300s. The monastery became significant and it ended in 1536 when the diocese seat was moved from Maguelone to Montpellier. On that occasion the church of the monastery was made a new cathedral.
Economically, there had also been bright spots; not least when Jacques Cœur came to town in 1432. He was a merchant, and during his time some flourishing was to be traced, but partly the power of the merchants in favor of office and legal scholars declined over the decades, and partly in the end of the century Marseille took over the role of the region’s economic center.
The Reformation rippled through Europe in the 16th century, and in Montpellier many of the citizens became Protestant. In this way, the city became a religious stronghold in opposition to Catholic France led by the French kings.
There was growing unrest between Catholics and Protestants in several parts of the country, and in Montpellier it ended with a siege over two months by King Louis XIII’s troops. The siege ended with the king’s victory, and after the victory the king let the great citadel of the city erect. This was done to ensure military control of the previously unruly city.
With the active counter-reform came new thoughts and thus the renewal of the once run-down city. Modern planning came into being and, among other things, Promenade du Peyrou was built. The city’s many elegant private mansions also shot up in the city, which in this time seriously cast off the Middle Ages. Montpellier had also achieved the status of Languedoc’s capital.
The economy flourished again and a growing production of textiles, leather, agricultural products and wine significantly increased the city’s revenue. In 1764, the aqueduct for the city center was erected. It brought water to Montpellier, which was a necessity for the city’s further development and modernization.
Railways were built in the 19th century, and the economy continued its positive development with some industrialization alongside large agricultural production. The upheaval lasted until the crisis in wine production, culminating in 1907. On that occasion, about 500,000 wine farmers demonstrated in the city’s streets.
Production progressed after some time, and today’s Montpellier took its final shape with the construction of central squares such as Comédie and many of the city’s new neighborhoods and green spaces.
In the 1960s, the city’s population rose sharply in connection with the resettlement of Frenchmen who, after Algeria’s independence, moved back to France.
In recent decades there has again been a great development in Montpellier. Among the biggest projects are the city’s modern tram network, Corum and the large city of Antigone. Antigone has significantly increased the city center, and the neighborhood has extended the city toward the river.
Montpellier, France[/caption]
Overview of Montpellier
Montpellier is one of the beautiful cities of southern France with its many nice churches, buildings, streets and squares. A city center lined with cafes, where the cuisine is tasty and where there are many and very varied things to look at in the mild Mediterranean climate.
The long and exciting history of the city has given it a number of interesting buildings and monuments, which are scattered in the city center and outside the heart of the picturesque old town. In many places, the oldest neighborhoods are like a maze, that you just have to explore.
Place de la Comédie is the center of modern and vibrant Montpellier. Here, inhabitants, trams, culture and shopping meet, and from here there is easy access to Place Royale du Peyrou, Montpellier’s Cathedral, the city’s two preserved medieval towers from the former fortifications and the Musée Fabre art museum, where works of great masters can be enjoyed.
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The Aqueduct de Saint-Clément is an aqueduct that was built as part of the 14 kilometer long aqueduct that supplied the water tower at the Place Royale du Peyrou with water from the Saint-Clément spring.
The aqueduct was completed in 1776 and was a large building that, with its numerous arches, cut monumentally through the city from the west. The preserved aqueduct is 800 meters long and 22 meters high. The fall along the aqueduct was 28 centimeters for every kilometre, and the source thus rises only about four meters higher than the end point Château d’Eau.
The water supply from the Saint-Clément spring provided drinking water and also made it possible to build some of the fountains that can still be found in Montpellier today. These are the Fontaine de Trois Grâces (Place de la Comédie), Fontaine de Cybele (Place Chabaneau) and Fontaine des Licornes (Place de la Canourgue).
Montpellier’s botanical garden is the oldest in France and among the oldest in Europe. It was established under King Henri IV in 1593, and they became a model for many later botanical plants in France.
The garden belongs to the city’s university, and on the approximately five hectares there are, among other things, tropical greenhouses, a 19th-century orangery and a lovely English landscape garden.
This chapel and pharmacy is a complex whose history began in 1622, when a group of women started a major charitable work that later resulted in a number of facilities, a house of worship and a hostel.
The local pharmacy is a museum, and it stands like a time warp from bygone centuries with many jars and other furnishings. The museum consists of two rooms showing 18th and 19th century pharmacies.
The Musée de l’histoire de Montpellier is an urban history museum housed in the now former church, Notre Dame de Table. The museum is actually located in the church’s Romanesque crypt from the 9th century, and here the town’s development from its foundation to the present day is portrayed in an exciting way.
Montpellier is a city that has as many as two opera houses and with a distance of only a few hundred meters between them. On the Place de la Comédie is the national opera, a status it received in 2002. The opera house was built in richly ornamented Italian style and was completed in 1888. The architect was Joseph-Marie Cassien-Bernard, who was a student of Charles Garnier.
Both the outside and the inside of the opera house are beautifully decorated. In the large foyer, for example, there are eight frescoes that symbolize dance, history, comedy, music, pastoral, poetry, song and tragedy. There are two halls in the opera, which have space for 1,200 and 350 spectators respectively.
The Tour de la Babote is one of the two preserved towers from the city wall that surrounded Montpellier with walls and 25 towers in the Middle Ages. The tower was built in the 12th century and its name comes from the Occitan word babota, meaning ghost. It was said that the tower was haunted, and therefore Tour de la Babote was a close term.
In 1745, the Royal Academy of Sciences set up an observatory in the tower, which thereby became a meeting place for the area’s astronomers. It has continued that role; now, however, with another astronomy organization as a resident.
If you are at the Tour de la Babote, you can walk the approximately 100 meters along Boulevard de l’Observatoire to Place Edouard Adam, where a very beautifully executed trompe l’oeil is painted on a house facade, i.e. an image that acts as a visual illusion.
The Esplanade park, along with the former military area Champ de Mars, is a favorite place to stroll in the city. The park opened in its current size in 1900, and it is very cozy here with the finely landscaped lakes, fountains and elegant avenues. The area is immediately adjacent to the central Place de la Comédie and is therefore a popular place for strolling.
Antigone is a district that was created in the 1980s by the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. Streets, squares, activities, transport and so on were created with the thoughts of creating a modern neighborhood with all that that entailed. The general impression is of symmetrical structures, a series of open squares and imposing buildings located around an east-west axis.
Antigone was built on the old barracks area of Joffre, of which only the citadel has been preserved to this day. The style is monumental neoclassicism, where details and dimensions are made colossal.
The axis, about a kilometer in length, runs from the Place du Nombre d’Or to the river Lez. From west to east, the squares Place du Millénaire, Place de Zeus and Place de Théssalie are passed before reaching the final semi-arch of the Esplanade de l’Europe, which opens towards Lez.
From here you can see the Hôtel de la Région (Avenue de la Pompignane 201) on the other side of the river. The Hôtel de la Region was also designed by Ricardo Bofill and it is the administration of the Languedoc-Roussillon region.
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