Canal du Midi

A canal between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean had been dreamed of by rulers from Augustus and Charlemagne to Francis I. Pierre-Paul Riquet, a wealthy salt-tax collector in Languedoc, sent his proposal to Louis XIV through the Archbishop of Toulouse in 1662. The hardest problem was supplying water to the summit at the Seuil de Naurouze, and Riquet planned to bring it from the streams of the Montagne Noire; on 9 November 1665 he let water into a test channel he had built at his own expense of 200,000 livres.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert authorized the work by royal edict in October 1666. A dam 700 m long and 30 m high was raised at Saint-Ferréol, and for fifteen years nearly 12,000 people worked on the canal, with paid rain days, Sundays and holidays and paid sick leave. The cost reached 17 to 18 million livres, 40 percent advanced by the king, 40 percent by the province and 20 percent by Riquet.

Riquet died in October 1680 and did not see the canal opened to navigation on 15 May 1681. Vauban, who inspected it in 1686, found it dilapidated and ordered works to strengthen its water supply and reservoir. UNESCO describes a network of 360 km of waterways with 328 structures, built between 1667 and 1694, that paved the way for the Industrial Revolution, and the canal was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1996.