France Guide
Languedoc
Languedoc is more an idea than a geographical entity. The modern région covers only a fraction of the lands where Occitan or the langue d'oc – the language of oc, the southern Gallo-Latin word for oui – once dominated. These stretched south from Bordeaux and Lyon into Spain and northwest Italy. The heartland today is the Bas Languedoc – the coastal plain and dry, stony vine-growing hills between Carcassonne and Nîmes. It's here that the Occitan movement has its power base, demanding recognition of its linguistic and cultural distinctiveness. A good part of its character derives from resentment of political domination by remote and alien Paris, aggravated by the area's traditional poverty. In recent times this has been focused on Parisian determination to drag the province into the modern world, with massive tourist development on the coast and the drastic transformation of the cheap wine industry. It is also mixed up in a vague collective folk memory with the brutal repression of the Protestant Huguenots around 1700, the thirteenth-century massacres of the Cathars and the subsequent obliteration of the brilliant langue d'oc troubadour tradition. It is a hostility that has made an essentially rural and conservative population vote traditionally for the Left – at least until the elections of 2002, which saw wide support for Le Pen's resurgent Front National. Although a sense of Occitan identity remains strong in the region, it has very little currency as a spoken or literary language, despite the popularity of university-level language courses and the foundation of Occitan-speaking elementary schools.
Highlights
1 Pont du Gard This graceful aqueduct is an emblem of southern France and a tribute to Roman determination.
2 Carcassonne The Middle Ages come alive in this walled fortress town.
3 Water-jousting A Setois tradition, in which teams of rowers charge at each other in gondolas.
4 St-Guilhem-le-Désert The ancient Carolingian monastery and the tiny hamlet at its feet present a quintessential Occitan panorama.
5 The Canal du Midi Cycling, walking or drifting along this tree-shaded canal is the most atmospheric way of savouring France's southwest.
6 Les Abattoirs This former slaughterhouse in Toulouse contains an important collection of modern and contemporary art.
7 Albi's Toulouse-Lautrec Museum The most comprehensive collection of Toulouse-Lautrec's work is in the former Bishop's Palace of his home town.