Photos: Joan Mañé
The Fonseranes locks, commonly called the nine Fonseranes locks, are a staircase of locks (nine gates and eight basins) located in Béziers (Hérault, Occitania, France), and constituting a major structure of the Canal du Midi. Since 1858 and the construction of the Orb canal bridge, the last two locks have not been used.
The adjacent locks are the Orb lock to the east and the Argens lock to the west.
Description
The staircase of locks has eight ovoid basins (specific to the Canal du Midi), and therefore 9 gates, allowing a height difference of 21.50 m to be crossed, over a length of 312 m. In the 19th century, when it was decided to abandon the crossing in the bed of the Orb and to build a canal bridge, the 7th basin was modified to be connected to the new reach leading to the bridge. Therefore, only six locks (7 gates) are now used. On the old route of the canal, there is a last lock at the mouth on the Orb (abandoned double lock of Notre-Dame).
The majesty of the place, the technical feat that it represented in terms of civil engineering, still seizes visitors to the site today. Traditional buildings such as the water coach, the stables, the lock keeper’s house still exist there. This ensemble makes the Fonseranes locks the 3rd most visited tourist site in the former Languedoc-Roussillon region, after the Pont du Gard and the city of Carcassonne. It is also one of the most visited structures on the Canal du Midi, with 320,000 visitors per year.
Since 1984, the Fonseranes locks have been doubled by a water slope, put into service in 1988, built to double the lock ladder and reduce transit times. However, this development was not allocated a sufficient budget to ensure more expensive operation and maintenance than expected and was practically never used. The frequent argument of the collapse of merchant traffic is highly unlikely since it was already extremely reduced when the Montech water slope was put into service, fourteen years earlier.
The lock site has undergone major redevelopment work. The amount of the operation amounted to €13.2 million, 36% of which was financed by the Béziers Méditerranée urban community, 18% by the Occitania region, 19% by the Hérault department and 4% by the city of Béziers. The State and the European Union also contributed 22%.
After 18 months of work — from January 2016 to June 2017 — the site reopened to the public on July 1, 2017. The locks are now accessed via a car park located at the top and visitors arrive through gardens on the site itself. The old water coach house has been renovated identically. This stopover was used in the 18th century to serve dinner, which was then the midday meal, to boatmen and their passengers. Today it houses the tourist office, a scenovision room on the history of the Canal du Midi and a shop selling local products. On its side has been grafted a panoramic restaurant in the shape of a ship’s prow, which offers a breathtaking view of Béziers Cathedral on one side and the canal on the other. The areas around the locks have been redesigned to maintain continuity with the existing materials: stone, granite, wood and smoothed concrete. Visitors can now go down a protected path, which prevents them from falling into the canal, sit on a bench in the shade of the cypress trees and reach the last deck, where a refreshment bar has been installed, while watching the ever-complicated manoeuvres of the boats. 30,000 barges, house boats and pleasure boats passed through Fonséranes in 2016.
Protection
The Fonseranes locks were classified as historical monuments by a decree of 14 October 1996. It includes: the facings of the eight basins; the quays of the entire structure, on the Canal du Midi and on the evacuation canal; the fourteen flights of stairs flanking the basins; the stone mooring posts; the arched culvert at the downstream end of the structure; the arched footbridge between the fourth and fifth basins. The whole has also been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996 under the Canal du Midi.
