Beziers Airfares (BZR) - France

Beziers, France - City Overview and Airfare Information

Beziers

Béziers (Besièrs in Occitan, and Besiers in Catalan) is a town in Languedoc, in the southwest of France. It is a commune and a sous-préfecture in the Hérault département, with a population around 70,000, called Biterrois.

The town is located on a small bluff above the river Orb, about 10km from the Mediterranean Sea. At Béziers the Canal du Midi spans the river Orb as an aqueduct called the pont-canal ('canal bridge').

Local traditions assign as the first Bishop of Béziers the Egyptian saint, Aphrodisius, said to have sheltered the Holy Family at Hermopolis and to have become a Christian, also said to have accompanied Sergius Paulus to Gaul to found the Church of Narbonne. He allegedly died a martyr at Béziers.

Local traditions had St. Aphrodisius arrive at Béziers mounted on a camel. Hence the custom of leading a camel in the procession at Béziers on the feast of the saint; this lasted until the Revolution.

The first historically known bishop is Paulinus mentioned in 418; St. Guiraud was Bishop of Béziers from 1121 to 1123; St. Dominic refused the episcopal see of Béziers in order to devote himself to supporting the Albigensian Crusade which exterminated the Cathars.

Among the fifteen synods held at Béziers was that of 356 held by Saturninus of Arles, an Arian archbishop which condemned St. Hilary. Later synods of 1233, 1246 and 1255 condemned the Cathars.

A Papal Brief of 16 June, 1877, authorized the bishops of Montpellier to call themselves bishops of Montpellier, Béziers, Agde, Lodève and Saint-Pons, in memory of the different dioceses united in the present Diocese of Montpellier.

Today Béziers is a principal center of the Languedoc viticulture and winemaking industries.

The A9 autoroute passes through Béziers. The final link in the A75 autoroute from Pezenas will be complete within a few years and provide direct links with Clermont-Ferrand and Paris.

Béziers-Agde-Vias Airport, owned by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, currently provides daily direct flights to Paris, Orly. With a planned extensison to the runway due to open in 2007, it is expected that a low-cost airline will offer flights to the United Kingdom and Germany.

• Modern Béziers fields a rugby union team (AS Béziers) with twelve championships to their credit.

• The Béziers Feria offers five days of festivity centred on bullfighting in the summer.

• Béziers also hosts annual Languedocienne Sea-Joustes in the summer.

• The nearby Oppidum d'Ensérune is an important archaeological site.

• The nearby Étang de Montady, a marsh drained in 1247, is a unique field and irrigaton system which is visible from the Oppidum d'Ensérune. Plots radiate out from the centre where channels that drain the land empty into a collector. The water is carried away by an aqueduct that passes under the hill to the floor of the old Capestang lake, itself drained in the 19th century.

Béziers was the birthplace of:

• Pierre Paul Riquet (1609 or 1604-1680), engineer and canal-builder responsible for the construction of the Canal du Midi
• Paul Pellisson (1624-1693), author
• Jean Barbeyrac (1674?-1744), jurist
• Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan (1678–1771), geophysicist.
• Jean Antoine Ernest Constans (1833-1913), statesman
• Jean Antoine Injalbert (1845-1933), sculptor.
• Jean Moulin (1899-1943), a hero of the French Resistance in World War II
• Edgar Faure (1908-1988), French statesman
• Alexandra Rosenfeld, Miss France 2006, Miss Europe 2006
• Julien Rodriguez, Olympique de Marseille footballer
• Jeremy Clement, Paris Saint-Germain FC footballer
• Richard Gasquet, French tennis player

• The book 'Labyrinth' by Kate Mosse, a work of fiction, draws on the history of Carcassonne, Béziers and the Cathars.

• Chiclana, Spain, since 1993
• Heilbronn, Germany, since 1965
• Stavropol, Russia, since 1982
• Stockport, United Kingdom, since 1972