Pierre Paul Riquet

The statue of Paul Riquet: it takes pride of place at the entrance to the Allées which bear his name. Pierre-Paul Riquet, born in Béziers in 1604, was the equivalent of a present-day tax inspector in the region of Languedoc. In 1662, he presented the King with a project for the creation of a canal to link the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, via the Garonne. This was an old concept, but, since the Roman period, nobody had been able to carry it out, being unable to solve the problem of how to provide a permanent supply of water to the canal. Paul Riquet found the key and in 1666, Louis XIV entrusted him with the building of the canal, which also led to the crossing of the Etang de Thau and the creation of the port of Sète.

Pierre-Paul Riquet invested his own fortune in the building of the Canal. He died on 1st October 1680, exhausted by the scale of the task he had undertaken, although only 1.6km of canal still remained to be dug before reaching the Etang de Thau… His son took over the works and the Canal was inaugurated barely one year later. Pierre-Paul Riquet was ennobled by Louis XIV in 1674. He became Baron Bonrepos (the Canton of Verfeil, Haute-Garonne) and his remains lie beneath a marble slab in Saint Etienne Cathedral in Toulouse.