A Little History of Modern Montpellier

The stair-step building, officially Tour le Triangle (the Triangle Tower).
Photo by G.Mannaerts — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=118391102

We recently went on a walking tour of one of the newer parts of Montpellier, known as Port Marianne. The latest area to be developed, it is filled with multi-story apartment buildings, giving an aspect that does not match our romantic (overly romantic?) notion of what France should look like. We took the tour to better understand this new development, and perhaps to update our outdated view of France.

The leader of this tour, a French woman who worked for the tourist office, was the same person who'd lead the tour of Montpellier's Maisons Particulars we took last spring. (Now that was a tour that satisfied our idea of what a traditional French city should be like!)

I liked the continuity (as it were)—we were continuing our discussion of the history of the city!

And indeed, while the tour was billed as covering the newest part of Montpellier, our guide also discussed some of the history leading up to the creation of Port Marianne....

    The Polygone

Modern Montpellier really began after World War II. The city needed a commercial center, and after some years of fluffing around, serious plans were made in 1959. Twenty years later the development known as the Polygone was finished and ready for business. Exciting for some, horrifying to others, the signature buildings today look very much out of place next to the nearby stone constructions of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The highly successful commercial part of the Polygone. Yes, that's the Tour le Triangle on the left.
In the distance straight ahead with the sightly curved roof is the very popular indoor mall.

Under that slightly curving roof are many stores; the popular mall is often crowded.

Particularly obnoxious (to some of us, at least) is the Tour le Triangle, aka the Stair-step Building (L'escalier, as it's known among the French). Innovative in its day, combining a hotel, apartments, and commercial space, it is  "a signature element of the city’s urban panorama." Which, for many of us, means an eyesore on the horizon. 

View from our new apartment of Polygone buildings (hard to ignore!).

The adjacent indoor mall (which has a lower profile) is thriving, although much of the rest of the original development seems unused and abandoned.

The less occupied side of the Polygone...

Lots of space here, but no one seems to want it!   

    And, the Antigone...

By the late 1970s George Frêche was mayor of Montpellier. Known for his dynamic local politics, he had a powerful vision of what he wanted the city to look like.

Trained as a lawyer, he was a professor at the University of Montpellier specializing in Roman Law. As he was quite taken by the Greco-Roman ideal, his vision of the city included a neoclassical touch.

Overview of the Antigone. That's the river Lez, dark and tranquil, on the lower right; the stairstep  building rises in the distance at the upper left. The former military reservation lies in between. Note the bars and restaurants mimicking Greek temples along the Lez; residential apartments occupy the huge curving building behind them.
Photo from alamy—hemis.fr

The result was the Antigone, a very symmetrical and well-ordered complex of buildings with a strong Greco-Roman theme. The buildings are typically four or five stories, mostly residential apartments, with the ground floor reserved for cafes, restaurants, and other businesses.

The dramatic, classical architecture of the Antigone.

The Fontaine Thessalie in  the (wait for it) Place de Thessalie.

Wandering through the Antigone...

...can be very pleasant!

Antigone is a character from Greek Mythology, a Theban princess, who appears in a number of Greek plays, most notably those by Sophocles. So, solidly neoclassical! In English it is pronounced with four syllables, something like an-TIG-o-nee (emphasis on that second syllable!). In French, however, it's pronounced with three syllables: AN-ti-gone.

Pronounced this way, it sounds almost like it could be intended as in opposition to, say, the Polygone—the anti-Polygone. A delicious pun, perhaps, putting down the previous commercial development? That would be perfectly in keeping with the character of M. Frêche, who was never keen on the architecture of the Polygone.

A statue of the Greek god Dionysus (known to the Romans as Bacchus), god of wine and wild uncultivated nature. It's one of many classic statues scattered throughout the Antigone.

An interesting historical tidbit: these property developments were possible because the land on which they were constructed had been preserved as a military reservation. It fact, it had been controlled by the military since the 16th century, during France's wars of religion.

King Louis XIV, the Sun King, was anxious to please the Pope, who carried considerable political weight in Europe in those days. Protestantism had been on the rise, much to the chagrin of the Pope. So, to curry favor,  King Louis began expelling all non-Catholics from France. 

The south of France—the region furthest from Paris—was a hotbed of Protestant activity, especially in the city of Montpellier. To keep an eye on things, the king built a military garrison just outside the city walls. It was this property, originally appropriated by Louis XIV and used by the military ever since, that finally became commercial developments in the 20th century.

Looking towards the Lez. The statue is Winged Victory; or Victoire de Samothrace. Greek, from around 100 BCE. (This is a copy of the original in the Louvre in Paris.)

  

  Port Marianne

Overview of Port Marianne, with the river in mid-ground.
The lake beyond it, on the far right, is surrounded by residential buildings with cafes and shops on their ground floors.
Photo by Elmontpelierano — Travail personnel, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39188667 

Time passed; the city grew. Community leaders wanted to develop the city in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, to the south. Detractors of the Antigone development pointed out that it was all urban, with little open space; developers of Port Marianne insisted on a mix of urbanism and nature. This development would have more open space, more parks. Plus the river Lez, and a small lake (the one seen in the photo above).

Some of the newer residential / commercial buildings in Port Marianne.

One question that comes up often (it sure bothered us for a long time!): Where is the Port, where are the boats, in Port Marianne? Well, there aren't any! The original plan called for a marina serving as a base for canal boats. But, due to the rise of the land, getting canal boats all the way up to Montpellier would require several locks which would take an hour or more to transit. And no one really wanted to do that.

So, no port, no boats. But there is that lake, the Bassin Jacques-Cœur (named for a very wealthy 15th century merchant based in Montpellier).

A canal boat base was built, however, but a couple of miles downstream near the small town of Lattes. It was named, rather confusingly, Port Ariane. Sounds very much like "Marianne" without the M. It seems the similarity was done deliberately: the good folks in Lattes are sticking their finger in the eye of Montpellier, as it were, satirizing Montpellier's failed attempt to build a port. There seems to be a good bit of small-town rivalry, with the outlying towns not too keen on the big city of Montpellier.

The new la mairie, or city hall building. Quite controversial when it was built!
(We could never shake the feeling that it was a Borg cube crashed to earth...)

But, from the right angle—such as here, reflecting the setting sun—it can be enticing. It is, in fact, quite a remarkable building.

The idea behind Port Marianne was to provide for four distinct developmental zones (referred to as ZAC in France),  each with its own characteristic style. (I'm glad we were told this, because it's a bit difficult to discern on one's own!)

La Mantilla, named after the traditional lace shawl worn in Spain; an image presumably invoked by the lacy white outer structure of the building.

One of the more remarkable buildings is the Koh-i-Nor, named for the diamond; presumably for the way in which the dichroic glass balconies reflect light.

Seen from across the river, the Koh-i-Nor is quite fantastic.

Some more recent Port Marianne buildings. The plants on the one to the left are watered from the building's gray water (from sinks and bathtubs).

Overall, Port Marianne has become an exercise in innovative architecture. While not every building is astonishing, it is a place open to builders and designers trying out new ideas.

The Cloud Building (aka the pillow).Specially engineered plastic panels form the outer shell.

Overall, it is certainly interesting, and sometimes a bit jarring, to move from Montpellier's center, the Ecusson, with it's "15th century buildings on 13th century foundations" through the oh-so-70s Polygone and into the sharply neoclassical Antigone, ending in the very modern Port Marianne.

We'll be spending Christmas, as we do every year, in Seville, looking up old friends and meeting again with our extended family. But first, we'll spend a week in Rome, just to shake things up a bit. We've got only a few more days here in Montpellier, but we will be back for New Years.

May your holidays be bright and meaningful!

A tree-lined residential "back street" in Port Marianne, showing its fall colors.