Sète opens its Museum of the Sea

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Sète opens its Museum of the Sea

The brand new place with large rooms with long, narrow bays open on the Mediterranean, is a jewel that the Languedoc-Roussillon adds to its tourist offer

The old building Ifremer plumb the Mediterranean, with clean geometric lines very 50, adjacent to the famous marine cemetery where Paul Valery and Jean Vilar rest. Completely redesigned by design architecture, the Museum of the Sea of ​​Sète is composed of large rooms with long, narrow bays open on the Mediterranean.The course begins with a comprehensive evocation of the port of Sète with plans, models, video, old sepia images and number of documents. We learn that already in the eighteenth century, fought against the silting Sétois using an arsenal of Jules Verne.Then comes the interesting part, the room Aversa name of a dynasty of Carpenters originally a shipyard established here in 1902 The heir to the name-a passionately embarked on the model with the idea to rebuild in the same models and the whole fleet of fishing ports coming out of the family arsenal. Some of them have been protected in 2010 as a historic monument. It finds the manufacture of a Catalan boat with two bilge keels, allowing the fire on the beach. The boat was used for fishing for blue fish (sardines, anchovies, mackerel ...) and Sete had in the beginning of the last century more than 90 lined up along the pier St. Louis.

The boat-be

Marseille still tray otherwise known as "sharp" introduced in the nineteenth century by Italian carpenters and boat-especially beef is discovered.This big boat weighted down by fifteen tons of gravel was used in couples who pulled a net as the ox pulls the plow. The sharp was used until the 50s.

Another room is devoted entirely to the boat schoolGovernor General Lépine and his incredible destiny.He was the liaison between Marseille and Algiers when his captain disobeys orders Vichy warning him to return to Marseille. He was one of the few ships to fly the flag for the Cross of Loraine and received February 21, 1948 the Croix de Guerre!

Finally, the last rooms take visitors in jousting that punctuate the life of the port since the sixteenth century and are every year around St. Louis (late August) a major point of local life with tens of thousands giving visitors a living at this charming museum extension.

Museum Wed 1, rue Jean Vilar. Sète. .: Tel 04 99 04 71 55 and www.sete.fr andwww.herault-tourisme.com