Harbour

Port-Neuf de Béziers

Name: Port-Neuf de Béziers
Address: Béziers, FR

Type: Harbour

River port on the Canal du Midi at Béziers, Hérault, at the foot of the Fonseranes lock flight and 2.9 NM west of Villeneuve-lès-Béziers.

Guide

Approach and anchoring

Approach from the Canal du Midi, Freycinet gauge. Maximum draught 1.40 m, air draught 3.30 m. The Fonseranes lock flight upstream lifts boats 21.50 m over seven basins; passage by appointment with VNF.

Practical

Moorings along the quay with water and electricity bollards, capitainerie open in season, showers, WC, laundry. Supermarket and bakeries within 600 m in the Faubourg area of Béziers.

Ashore

Écluses de Fonseranes, the seven-basin staircase completed in 1697, is 300 m upstream and receives around 320,000 visitors a year. Cathedrale Saint-Nazaire de Béziers on its rock above the Orb, 1.8 km on foot. Pont-canal de l'Orb, cast-iron aqueduct of 1858, crosses the river 400 m from the port.

History

The Canal du Midi reached Béziers in 1681 after Pierre-Paul Riquet died in 1680 without seeing the work completed. The Fonseranes flight was his engineering answer to a 21 m drop in a short distance and still functions with its seventeenth-century stone chambers.

Story

Riquet financed the canal partly from his own fortune and died in debt. His family recovered the investment only a generation later when royal revenues from canal tolls caught up.