Canal du Midi

Routes linked to Canal du Midi, classified as UNESCO heritage. The idea about the Canal du Midi is already quite old. The Romans and Leonardo Da Vinci had already an idea to create a canal in France. But always the same problem: overcoming the hills in the dry Languedoc province. In the seventeenth century, the pressure increased to avoid the one-month and two-thousand-kilometer-long detour around hostile Spain. The channel was eventually created by Pierre-Paul Riquet and the Italian François Andréossy in the period 1667-1680. The waterway was fed into the Languedoc area by a 30 km long feed channel. The Lac de Saint-Ferréol was constructed: the largest reservoir of that time. The canal has many other artworks, such as trap locks, aqueducts, a tunnel, etc. Therefore, it was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1996. Famous is the aqueduct or "pont-canal" at Béziers, which spans the Orb. Designed to serve the wheat trade, Jean-Baptiste Colbert authorized the start of work by royal edict in October, 1666. Under the supervision of Pierre-Paul Riquet, construction lasted from 1666 to 1681, during the reign of Louis XIV. The Canal du Midi is one of the oldest canals of Europe still in operation (the prototype being the Briare Canal). The challenges in these works are closely related to the challenges of river transport today. The key challenge, raised by Pierre-Paul Riquet, was to convey water from the Montagne Noire (Black Mountains) to the Seuil de Naurouze, the highest point of the canal.