Car Hire in Montpellier, France
A thousand years of trade and intellectual endeavor has developed
Montpellier a teeming, and enthusiastic city. Benjamin of Tudela, the tireless twelfth-century Jewish traveller, documented its streets crowded with traders, Christian and Saracen, Arabs from the Maghrib, vendors from Lombardy, from the kingdom of Rome, from every corner of Egypt, Greece, Gaul, Spain, Genoa as well as Pisa. A number of hiccups - like being sold to France in 1349, nearly caused the total destruction for its Protestantism in 1622, and depression in the wine trade in the early years of this century - have done little to dent this improvement. Nowadays, it vies with Toulouse for the title of most dynamic city in the south. The reputation of its university specially, started in the 13th century and most well-known because of its medical school, is a long-standing one: around 60,000 students still set the intellectual and ethnic tone of the city - the average age of whose citizens is considered being just 25.
Montpellier's city centre - the old town - is small, compact, architecturally homogeneous, complete with charm and teeming with life, except in July and August when the students are on holiday and everybody else is at the beach. Together with, the place is nearly entirely pedestrianized, so you're able to stroll the narrow streets without looking anxiously over your shoulder.
At the hub of the city's life-style, linking the old part to its newer accretions is place de la Comédie, or "L'Oeuf" to the initiated. This colossal, oblong square, paved with cream-coloured marble, incorporates a fountain at its centre and cafés on each side. One end is covered by the Opéra, a luxuriant nineteenth-century theatre; the other opens onto the Esplanade, an exquisite tree-lined promena,de which ends in the Corum concert hall , dug in the hillside and topped off in pink granite, with splendid scenery from the roof. The city's most trumpeted museum,
the Musée Fabre (Tues-Fri 9am-5.30pm, Sat & Sun 9.30am-5pm; 25F/?3.81), is within reach on boulevard Sarrail and features an extensive and historically important collection of 17th to 19th century French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Flemish as well as English artwork, together with works by Delacroix, Raphael, Jan van Steen and Veronese.
From the northern side of L'Oeuf, rue de la Loge and rue Foch , began in the 1880s in Montpellier's own Haussmann-izing spree, slice from the heart of the old city. Either side of them, a labyrinth of narrow lanes slopes away to the neighboring modern boulevards. A couple of structures survive from before the 1622 siege, but the city's fast-paced bourgeoisie swiftly made up for the loss, proclaiming their economic power in lots of austere 17th and 18th century mansions. Referred to as "Lou Clapas" (rubble), the place is rapidly being restored and gentrified. It's actually an excitement to wander through and come upon the secretive little squares like place St-Roch, place St-Ravy and place de la Canourgue.
First left off rue de la Loge is Grande-Rue Jean-Moulin, where Moulin, hero of the Resistance, lived at no. 21. To the left, at no. 32, the present-day Chamber of Commerce is found in among the most interesting eighteenth-century hôtels, the Hôtel St-Côme, originally established as a demonstration operating theatre for medical students. About the opposite corner, rue de l'Argenterie forks up to place Jean-Jaurès. This square is a nodal part of the city's student life: on a fine night time between 6pm and 7pm you will get the impression that a portion of the population possibly not in place de la Comédie is sitting here along with the surrounding place du Marché-aux-Fleurs. Throughout the Gothic doorway of no. 10 of place Jean-Jaurès, is the so-called palace of the kings of Aragon, who ruled Montpellier for a stretch on the 13th century. Nearby is the Halles Castellane, an elegant, iron-framed market hall.
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