For generations people have come to the south of France, following the Rhône River to the Mediterranean, then turning left to Cannes, Nice and Monte Carlo. Increasingly, discerning travellers are turning right towards Montpellier, Pézenas, and Perpignan in Languedoc.
Languedoc is the south of France of one’s dreams: empty roads shaded by plane trees where cicadas sing; a blue sky over the Mediterranean Sea with over three hundred days of sunshine a year; and an historic landscape, where the Greeks first landed their boats, the Romans created their first colony outside Italy, and every footstep is an echo of an earlier journey.
Today this is the largest vineyard in the world, stretching from the Rhône to the Pyrenees. There are also olive trees, melon fields and fruit trees, flamingos and oyster beds in the lagoons, and markets full of local produce: almonds, apricots, asparagus, cherries, figs, melons, peaches, tomatoes, and truffles.
The Canal du Midi, a Unesco world heritage site that links the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean, winds through the landscape; there is world-class shopping, Michelin-starred restaurants and high-tech industry in Montpellier; bullfighting in Béziers; and the Renaissance buildings of Pézenas, where Molière lived, France’s most popular playwright.
You won’t be the first to appreciate Languedoc: artists and writers have been drawn to this magnificent landscape for years. Gustave le Gray photographed the waves at Sète at the end of the 19th century, which became the most expensive photograph in the world when the Getty Museum paid more than $1 million for it; Henri Matisse discovered colour in Collioure; while Lawrence Durrell lived in Sommières and wrote a number of his best books there and spent time in the bar.
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