Sète is the largest fishing port on France’s Mediterranean coast. Every day trawlers return to the harbour with a catch sold at the daily auction. Incredibly good news for those who enjoy seafood. Enormous ferries leave for Corsica and Morocco, container ships unload their goods and there are too many leisure boats to count. Despite the summer crowds of tourists, Sète has the grittiness, energy and attitude of a working port.
The port rubs shoulders with the pretty and vibrant historic centre of Sète – you’re never far away from seeing a ship of some sort. From the Saint-Louis lighthouse on the harbour wall, you can see a lot of the action as fishing trawlers come and go amongst other boats. The activity is no surprise, the port was purpose built in the 1660s as the end point of the Canal du Midi, becoming a major centre for French inland and maritime shipping.
A second canal linking Sète and the River Rhône was finished in the early 19th century, boosting the commercial importance of the town. Both canals reach Sète through the huge Étang de Thau lagoon running behind the town, it creates a strip of marshy land on the lagoon side and a 15km-long beach facing the Mediterranean. We left the isolated calm of Aignes heading for the beach and straight back into the maelstrom.
As we passed by Béziers there was more and more traffic until, close to the town of Agde, everything ground to a halt. It seemed like half of Europe was heading to the beach. Luckily, it’s a long strip of sand. A few kilometres along the seafront we parked up and discovered only a scattering of people. It was mid-morning so we had a couple of hours to splash around in the warm waters and then head to Sète for lunch.
Things went to plan until we tried to find somewhere to park in Sète. Once we found a free spot we vowed never to drive again unless it was a life or death situation. The walk across town to our hotel on the Place Léon Blum at least introduced us to the network of canals that crisscross Sète, linking the docks and harbour to the lagoon, and creating two islands of pastel coloured houses in the city centre.
It was ferociously hot on the streets so we were delighted to discover the covered market, the Halles de Sète, was only a stone’s throw away from the hotel. The market’s numerous stalls sell excellent seafood as well as local produce. It has several cafes and stalls where you can eat. We came every morning for coffee at a cafe where tourists mixed with locals, the oldest of whom spoke a tricky to understand dialect.
A friend, who lives down the coast in Montpellier, told us the dialect has a heavy Italian influence from all the Italians who came to work on the docks and in the fishing fleet. Catalan is also in the mix, as is Arabic thanks to the trade with and migration from North Africa. Sète may seem like a small, understated place, but its history has turned it into a melting pot of cultural influences.
Sète is often referred to as the Venice of Languedoc, and the lagoon and canals give it a passing likeness. It is in the tightly packed narrow streets that climb up the lower flanks of Mont Saint-Clair where the similarity really lies though. Not with Venice, but with those other gitty, vibrant ports of Naples and Catania, where so many of the Italian migrants who arrived in Sète in the 19th and early 20th centuries came from.
I had a vague memory of having lunch in Sète over twenty years ago when visiting those same Montpellier friends. Probably because we spent our time eating fabulous seafood and messing around on the beach, I had no recollection of the town. It turned out to be a pleasant surprise. The poet Paul Valéry called it a “singular island” and on this coast of overdeveloped tourism Sète keeps things real.
There is a real Mediterranean vibe here, and the jousting boats waiting in the harbour.
It’s a lovely place, I’d like to go back outside the summer peak season.