The Land
The AOC system, the Canal du Midi, the GR footpath network, the Causses UNESCO listing and the other frameworks that shaped the countryside the buildings sit in.
5 pieces in this section
The planes were planted to shade the water and hold the banks together.
Photo: Sick Platanus ×hispanica trees, Canal du Midi, Agde · Wikimedia Commons
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A Wine Road About 170 Kilometres Long, and the Terraces Along It
The AOC system (established 1935) as landscape-maker — how controlled-origin designations shaped the Alsace Route des Vins, the Côtes du Rhône terraces and the Bordeaux river frontages into the forms they hold today.
The Land -
The Cévennes Were Listed for What People Did to Them
The Causses and Cévennes UNESCO cultural landscape listing (2011) was awarded for agropastoral land use — transhumance, the drailles (drove roads), chestnut cultivation — not for wilderness.
The Land -
At Marennes-Oléron the Oyster Is Finished in a Clay Pond
The claires — shallow clay-bottomed ponds on the Charente estuary — where Marennes-Oléron oysters are finished before sale.
The Land -
Pierre-Paul Riquet's Canal, 360 Years of Platane, and What the Canker Killed
The Canal du Midi (constructed 1667–1681, UNESCO listed 1996) as a managed landscape — the 42,000 plane trees planted as its towpath, the Xylella fastidiosa outbreak that has killed tens of thousands of them since 2006, and what the replanting programme proposes.
The Land -
Not a National Park: What a Parc Naturel Régional Actually Protects
The Parcs naturels régionaux (established 1967) are designated for inhabited working landscapes — they permit farming, forestry and construction that a national park would not.
The Land
Where these pieces are
Metropolitan France at true coordinates. Each numbered point is a place written about on this site; click one to read its piece.
- a numbered point is a place written about here — click it for the piece
- France: coast and land border, at true coordinates
- neighbouring countries, shown for context only
- scale bar 200 km, lower left · north arrow, upper left