Hymn to contemporary poetry, the Voice vives Mediterranean to invest the streets, the squares, the gardens of the 17th and the 25th of July. As planned, the tournaments of jousting festival of Saint-Louis will be held on the royal Canal from 20 to 25 August. These two appointments is summarized in the DNA of Sète, anchored in a sea of nurturing and a source of inspiration. This first fishing port and second port of French trade in the Mediterranean, not bad for a city of 45,000 inhabitants, is a breeding ground for artists.
In 2021, it will celebrate the 150 years of the birth of Paul Valéry and the 100 years of one of Georges Brassens. The man of the theatre Jean Vilar, creator of the Avignon Festival, and a number of painters, Gabriel Couderc, Jean Raymond Bessil, Hervé Di Rosa, Robert Combas, Topolino… are his children. Pierre Soulages was eventually settle there. Agnès Varda grew up there, and then filmed his first movie. And the collection of street art, thirty works today, is enriched in each K-Live, one of the many festivals that punctuate the season. Except this year.
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chock-Full prior to the health crisis, the agenda has melted at speed great V. But, at the beginning of June, resistance was organized. Only major events confirmed, the 22th Voice vives Mediterranean and the 277es festival of Saint-Louis will be in these days in line with their plan B is adapted to the conditions. As for the organizers of the seven festivals cancelled in July-August, they will orchestrate concerts in public places, in the absence of live entertainment under the stars at the Theater of the Sea, installed in the enclosure Seventeenth of fort Saint-Pierre. It becomes this summer the Cinema of the Sea: “From 1 July to 31 August, 90 films will be screened in the open air, at the rate of one session each evening, to 22 hours, from Sunday to Wednesday, plus a second session at midnight on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, details Tiphaine Collet, the director of the office of tourism. The spectators do not occupy a seat on the three, which is 500 seats.”
The island singulièreComme planned, the tournaments of jousting festival of Saint-Louis will be held on the royal canal from 20 to 25 August. Jean-Pierre Degas / OT
Between these festivities city and seaside pleasures, the summer of 2020 promises to finally not so different to the vacationers. All the more that the most beautiful representation, it is the city itself, enclosed by canals spanned by twelve bridges, fixed, swing, lift ; bumpy like a whale by the mont Saint-Clair and stretched as a peninsula. Obviously, like any city of canals, it is nicknamed “the Venice of…”. Name to forget. With the “island unique”, Paul Valéry offered in Sète, the most beautiful of the AOC. At the top of the mont Saint-Clair, 183 m above sea level, 360° view of the grande bleue and the étang de Thau striated oyster, we feel we are really on an island. The look sometimes magnetized by the docks and colourful port facilities, sometimes by stroke clear of the Lido, 12 km of beach between the sea and the lagoon, until Marseillan.
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After these stops on the picture on the top place, boarding for travelling, time for a mini-cruise. The most complete, 1: 30 p.m., sails on the canals, in ports and on the pond. The comments make the beautiful part to the history of Sète, which was created by Louis XIV, we can not thank you enough, in order to ensure the future canal du Midi with an outlet on the Mediterranean. The birth of the city is dated 29th August, 1666. On this day, to kick off work on the port, the first jousting tournament was organized to celebrate the Saint-Louis. The sea Museum (free entry), a new room has this sport in languedoc, whose love of the Sétois. More than a thousand of the practice, initiated at the age of 3 years in a school dedicated to it, then recruited by the seven societies of jousting.
Paul Valéry has done a poem:
“the Graveyard by The sea”
, clinging to the side of the cliff at the foot of mont Saint-Clair. RIEGER Bertrand / hemis.fr
Clinging to the side of the cliff between heaven and sea, at the foot of mont Saint-Clair, the location is superb. Paul Valéry has made a poem, the Graveyard by The sea, 24 stanzas and 144. The first few are etched in our memory of school children: “This roof quiet, where walk of the doves, Between the pine-trees quivers, between the tombs ; Midi/ the fair is composed of lights/ the sea, The sea, ever renewed…” This burial place is actually called the cemetery of Saint-Charles. But, in tribute to the poet who is based here since 1945, the city has collated the official name of the site that the famous poem, published just a battery a hundred years. The first manuscript is in the Musée Paul-Valéry (just above the cemetery). In this museum, paint, a space has been reserved to the writer. We discovered a wealth of documents and, more unexpectedly, drawings, pastels and watercolours made by him.
Espace Brassens is a place of reunion. Here, the poet tells his life to the ear, by audioguide interposed. Thanks to this amazing soundtrack is composed of recordings in perfect sync, it is he who will guide you through the ten rooms devoted each to an episode of his existence. With the headphones, you listen to her speak. And, without the headset, you can hear it sing, as his songs go, of course in a loop in the museum. It emerges with guitar chords and lyrics to head full. Like this verse of the Supplication to be buried at the beach of Sète. “Dig if it is possible a small hole fluffy/ A good small/ niche With my childhood friends, the dolphins/ along this shore where the sand is so fine/ On the beach of the Corniche.” Brassens has not been successful. It is based at “the great pond of ducks” (the pond of Thau, in The Friends first), to the cemetery of the Py, on the other side of the boulevard Camille Blanc, in front of the museum.
Crosses Agnès Varda, in the neighborhood of the Tip Short, a monumental fresco is a tribute to the filmmaker who made here his first film in 1954. Annie Barbaccia /Le Figaro
It is a piece of earth by the blade of a knife at the edge of the Thau lagoon, inhabited by fishermen and a colony of cats. With its small houses adjoining, its jumble of nets and sheds and its small boats to key-key, this mini-neighborhood, a dock, two streets, a few ties – is a world apart. In 1954, Agnès Varda has turned, with Silvia Monfort and Philippe Noiret, his first film, La Pointe Courte, a prelude to the New Wave. At the café in The Passage, we linger in front of the photos from the shoot. Since last year, a crosspiece that carries the name of the filmmaker. A monumental fresco paid homage to him.
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