Canal du Midi

Interesting facts

The dream of linking the two seas is old: in 1516 Francis I had Leonardo da Vinci survey a route from Toulouse towards Carcassonne.

Riquet, a salt-tax collector with no technical training, built a working scale model of the canal, complete with locks and tunnels, on his estate at Bonrepos.

To prove water could reach the summit, Riquet paid for a test channel just two feet wide, which first carried water on 9 November 1665.

The Saint-Ferréol dam, about 700 metres long and 30 metres high, is described as Europe's largest civil engineering work of its day.

Nearly 12,000 men and women dug the canal largely by hand with picks, hoes and shovels, using gunpowder only to blast through rock.

Riquet's workers received benefits unheard of in the 1660s: days off for rain, Sundays and holidays, paid sick leave, and at first double the farm wage.

Riquet died in October 1680, seven months before the canal was formally opened, and his heirs needed more than a century to clear the family's debts.

Its oval lock chambers turned the strength of the arch against the pressure of the surrounding soil, an idea later copied on early American canals.

The Malpas Tunnel near Béziers is considered the first tunnel ever built to carry a navigable canal.

Carcassonne refused to share the original cost, so the canal bypassed the city until a new route through its centre opened in 1810.

Why it is worth it

Between 1666 and 1681, under Louis XIV and with the backing of his minister Colbert, Pierre-Paul Riquet built a waterway 240 km long from Toulouse to the Étang de Thau on the Mediterranean. Together with the later Garonne Lateral Canal it gave France a water route from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean that avoided the long sea passage round Spain. It is one of the oldest canals in Europe still in use, and its builders solved problems that had defeated planners since Roman times.

The critical difficulty was water. The canal rises 57 metres from Toulouse to its summit at the Seuil de Naurouze, then descends for 188 km to the sea, and a summit canal needs a supply at its highest point. Riquet's answer was to gather streams from the Montagne Noire through feeder channels and reservoirs and bring them down to Naurouze. Along the way his engineers built locks with curved, oval side walls, after the first straight-sided ones collapsed; aqueducts carrying the canal over rivers; the Malpas tunnel, 165 metres through a hill near Béziers; and, at Fonserannes, a staircase of locks cut in rock, lifting boats up from the river Orb. The Fonserannes staircase was subcontracted to two brothers and built largely by women.

Commercial traffic has ended, and the canal is now one of the busiest leisure waterways in Europe. Hire boats, hotel barges and restaurant boats move slowly past lock-keepers' houses and old watermills, past Castelnaudary, Carcassonne, Trèbes and Béziers. The towpaths are popular with cyclists: paved stretches run for about 50 km from Toulouse and about 12 km between Béziers and Portiragnes, and it is possible to ride the whole route from Sète to Bordeaux. Navigation runs from the third Saturday in March to the first week of November, with maintenance in winter.

The canal was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. Its famous avenue of plane trees, planted from the early 19th century, has been devastated by canker stain, a fungal disease first found in 2006; tens of thousands of trees are being felled and replaced with other species, so long sections now have young trees rather than the old green tunnel.

Getting there

The canal begins in Toulouse at the Port de l'Embouchure, about 2 km from the city centre, and runs east through the departments of Haute-Garonne, Aude and Hérault. Toulouse-Blagnac Airport (TLS) is about 5 km from its starting point. Boat hire bases and towns are spread along its length, so the best starting point depends on which section you want to see.

Canal du Midi

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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