The Venice of Languedoc — tielle de Sète octopus pie, jousting on the canals, and the most singular fishing port on France's Mediterranean coast
Sète is a working port city on a narrow isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Étang de Thau lagoon in the Hérault — sometimes called 'the Venice of Languedoc' for its network of canals, but genuinely unlike anywhere else in France. The city is the birthplace of poet Paul Valéry and singer-songwriter Georges Brassens. Its food identity is equally distinctive: tielle de Sète (a spiced octopus pie in pastry, originally brought by Italian immigrant fishermen from Gaeta) is Sète's signature dish and sold nowhere else in France. The Étang de Thau produces France's finest oysters and mussels. Th…
Sète was founded in 1666 by Louis XIV as a new Mediterranean port to replace Aigues-Mortes, which had silted up. The Canal Royal (now Canal du Midi, UNESCO) was connected to Sète to create a continuous waterway from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Italian fishermen from Gaeta arrived in the 18th–19th centuries and brought tielle (their word for a savoury pie), which evolved into the specifically local tielle de Sète. Paul Valéry (1871–1945), one of France's greatest poets, was born in Sète; his tomb overlooks the sea at the Cimetière Marin, immortalised in his poem of the same name.