A thousand kilometer north lies another connecting route.
Photo credit:Gemma Llorensi Torrent/Flickr
Canal des Deux Mers consist of two canals.
From the Mediterranean port of Sete to Toulouse, a distance of 240 km, runs Canal du Midi.
From Toulouse to the town of Castets-en-Dorthe, 193 km away, the canal is called Canal de Garonne.
The remainder of the route to Bordeaux uses the Garonne River.
Often, the entire canal is called Canal du Midi.
The possibility of building an alternative route through France was first discussed by the ancient Romans.
It wasnt until the 17th century that the first realistic project for the canal was drafted.
The logistics were immense and complex, and the project itself looked precarious.
In these fourteen years, Pierre-Paul Riquet solved many engineering problems that still challenges river transport today.
Riquet himself died a year before Canal du Midi was completed.
It took another two centuries before Canal de Garonne could be dug connecting Canal du Midi with the Atlantic.
Canal traffic reached its peak in the middle of the 19th century.
After that, railways became the preferred mode of transport and boat traffic on the canal declined.
In 1996 the channel and a buffer zone of 2,000 square km were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
