Rome's first Gallic colony — honey, oysters, and the most important Roman capital you've never heard of
Narbonne was Rome's first colony in Gaul (118 BCE) — the capital of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis — and the largest Roman city in what is now France. Today it is a modest Occitan town between Montpellier and Perpignan, but its market (the Halles de Narbonne) is one of the finest covered food markets in the south of France, selling local honey (miel de Narbonne, noted by Pliny the Elder 2,000 years ago), Fitou and Corbières wines, Roussillon oysters, and Catalan products. The uncompleted Gothic cathedral of Saint-Just — only the choir was built, the nave was never added, so it ends…
Colonia Narbo Martius (118 BCE) was the first Roman colony outside Italy and the most important Roman city in Gaul before Lyon — a terminus of the Via Domitia (the first Roman road in Gaul) and the main port for the export of Italian wine to the Celtic world. Julius Caesar landed here multiple times; Augustus wintered here. The city declined after the Via Domitia shifted commerce, and the harbour silted up in the medieval period. The great medieval archbishop's palace (now a museum) and the Canal de la Robine (a UNESCO extension of the Canal du Midi) are the most visible remnants of Narbonne'…