France Guide
Languedoc
Jardin des Plantes
Opening time: July & Aug daily noon–8pm; Sept– June daily 2–5pm
Price: Free
On the hill at the end of rue Foch, from which the royal artillery bombarded the Protestants in 1622, the formal gardens of the Promenade du Peyrou look out across the city and away to the Pic St-Loup, which dominates the hinterland behind Montpellier, with the distant smudge of the Cévennes beyond. At the farther side a swagged and pillared water tower marks the end of an eighteenth-century aqueduct modelled on the Pont du Gard. Beneath the grand sweep of its double-tiered arches is a daily fruit and veg market and a huge Saturday flea market. At the city end of the promenade, the vainglorious Arc de Triomphe shows Louis XIV as Hercules, stomping on the Austrian eagle and English lion, forcefully reminding the locals of his victory over their Protestant "heresy".
Lower down the hill, on boulevard Henri-IV, the lovely but slightly run-down Jardin des Plantes, with avenues of exotic trees, is France's oldest botanical garden, founded in 1593.