page_title: Canal du Midi
section_title: The ports
hierarchical_section_title: Canal du Midi / The structures / The ports
caption_attribution_description: Español: Estanque del Canal du Midi en Castelnaudary Français&#160;: Le Canal du Midi à Castelnaudary. Color Film - Photo taken 1998 - scanned by the author. Better version one day.
context_page_description: The Canal du Midi is a 240 km long canal in Southern France. Originally named the Canal royal en Languedoc and renamed by French revolutionaries to Canal du Midi in 1789, the canal was at the time considered one of the greatest construction works of the 17th century.
  The canal connects the Garonne to the Étang de Thau on the Mediterranean and along with the 193 km long Canal de Garonne forms the Canal des Deux Mers, joining the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The canal runs from the city of Toulouse down to the Étang de Thau near the Mediterranean.
  Strictly speaking, "Canal du Midi" refers to the portion initially constructed from Toulouse to the Mediterranean – the Deux-Mers canal project aimed to link together several sections of navigable waterways to join the Mediterranean and the Atlantic: first the Canal du Midi, then the Garonne which was more or less navigable between Toulouse and Bordeaux, then the Garonne Lateral Canal built later, and finally the Gironde estuary after Bordeaux.
context_section_description: Several ports were built at regular intervals along the route of the canal in order to load and unload goods and also to provide stopping-places for travellers. Toulouse has two ports: the port de l'Embouchure is located at the junction of the Canal du Midi, the Canal de Brienne, and the Lateral canal of the Garonne while Port Saint-Sauveur is located in the centre of town near the Hall of Grains. There were two other ports in Toulouse but they were destroyed for urban development. So the Port des Minimes and the Port Saint-Etienne were replaced by towpaths.
  Castelnaudary has a port of 7 hectares called Grand Basin built between 1666 and 1671. It served as a stopover halfway between Toulouse and Sète. Cybelle island in the middle of the basin was used to protect the barges from the wind. Carcassonne is today a major tourist stop on the canal and has a port built in 1810 at the time when the city was connected to the canal. The port of Trèbes is a major port which has numerous moorings for boats. There are also the ports of Homps which was one of the most important on the canal and Le Somail which was a popular place for rest and recreation. Finally, just before its arrival at the Mediterranean Sea, the canal has two ports: the port of Agde where there is the old hotel of the "Administration of the Canal", and the port of Onglous at Marseillan which is the last port before Sète and its royal canal giving access to the sea.
  Newer ports were built such as Ramonville-Saint-Agne, called Port-Sud, which has many residential barges and is set directly overlooking the harbour, and Port-Lauragais located near Avignonet-Lauragais on a service area of the A61 autoroute.
caption: The basin of the Canal du Midi at Castelnaudary, one of the ports on the canal
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