Photo : Peter Gugerell / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.5)
Canal du Midi au Somail
The Canal du Midi was designed by Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax collector who proposed the project to Louis XIV. Authorised by an edict of October 1666, the building site was carried out under Colbert's supervision; Riquet died in 1680 and the work opened to navigation on 15 May 1681. It links Toulouse to the Mediterranean and has 79 locks. It has been inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage since 1996.
Le Somail is a hamlet of about 500 inhabitants, attached to three communes of the Aude. Its port was built as an overnight stop, and the inn of 1684 welcomed travellers. You can see the humpback stone bridge known as "Riquet's", a seventeenth-century chapel, warehouses and an ice house, the only structure of its kind surviving on the canal. Several buildings are listed historic monuments, and a large bookshop has set up by the water.
