August 3rd - What's new in Southern France?

Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast

The Independent

Places & Travel, Leisure, Society & Culture

3.6 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 3 August 2023

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

I am in southern France, where three splendid new openings have taken place this summer, and I suggest you add them to your list. Specifically, I am on the verandah of the Hotel la Prison, perched on a high bluff next to the cathedral in Beziers. It has just opened as a boutique hotel, and beautifully done it is too. Stay here before it catches on and the prices rise. To the east, in the town of Agde, Chateau Laurens is a one-man folly: an extravagant mansion created by Emmanuel Laurens, with Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and Hollywood flourishes. And to the west, in Narbonne, the spectacular new Narbo Via houses a collection of funerary monuments rescued from the old Roman walls. All are easy to connect by rail in a matter of minutes, and I urge you to add them to your travel list.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder for Thursday the 3rd of August.
0:08.9	I'm in the south of France and in particular I want to bring you details of three new enterprises,
0:18.1	touristic locations which have opened this very summer in the hope that perhaps you will be able to get here if you're travelling to this part of the world this summer or indeed you'll be able to arrange a visit for later on during the year, maybe even early, next year. I'm sitting at about, I don't know, 100 metres
0:41.9	above sea level right next to the cathedral in Beziere, which is a pretty town. It's on the Via Domitia,
0:53.4	the great Roman road, which stretches all the way down to the Spanish border.
1:00.2	And the reason I'm sitting here is because I'm in the Hotel La Prison.
1:07.3	Yes, the prison hotel.
1:10.6	This was an actual prison until 2009. It was built in the 19th century,
1:18.3	but it actually has very much architecturally taken its lead from the honey-coloured sandstone
1:26.4	of the tower and cathedral above me.
1:29.3	It was designed effectively to take the pressure off other prisons in the area.
1:35.3	Originally for 49 people or men, sometimes it contained more than 300.
1:43.3	It was a place where the guillotine was regularly used most
1:48.9	recently in 1949 to execute two young boys. So a tragic history after it closed down like these places
1:59.8	tend to do. It was used as a film set for a while then it fell into some disrepair until it was bought and transformed into what i would call very much a boutique hotel there's all kinds of artworks everywhere yes your room is a former cell but what they've done is
2:21.0	they've effectively every two cells every three cells they've kept one as a bedroom and they've then
2:29.0	put the half of the middle one into the bathroom and very nice it is two.
2:35.9	Many of the rooms have great views.
2:38.2	There's something called a swimming pool which is a sort of elongated trough.
2:42.8	Well you could go swimming if you want to.
2:44.3	I've seen people there but it does get a bit crowded.
2:47.3	There's a superb restaurant with a view stretching across the west of province all over the...
	...

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