Agde

Agde (Agde ) is a commune in the Hérault department in southern France. It is the Mediterranean port of the Canal du Midi.

Location
Agde is located on the river Hérault, 4 km from the Mediterranean Sea, and 750 km from Paris. The Canal du Midi connects to the Hérault at the Agde Round Lock ("L'Écluse Ronde d'Agde") just above Agde and flows into the Mediterranean at Le Grau d'Agde.

Foundation
Agde (525 B.C.) is one of the oldest villages in France, right behind Béziers (575 B.C.) and Marseille (600 B.C.). Agde (Agathe Tyche, "good fortune") was a 5th-century BCE Greek colony settled by Phocaeans from Massilia. The symbol of the city, the bronze Ephebe of Agde, of the 4th century BCE, recovered from the fluvial sands of the Hérault, was joined in December 2001 by two Early Imperial Roman bronzes, of a child and of Eros, which had doubtless been on their way to a villa in Gallia Narbonensis when they were lost in a shipwreck.

Development
In the history of Roman Catholicism in France, the Council of Agde was held 10 September 506 at Agde, under the presidency of Caesarius of Arles. It was attended by thirty-five bishops, and its forty-seven genuine canons deal "with ecclesiastical discipline". One of its canons (the seventh), forbidding ecclesiastics to sell or alienate the property of the church from which they derived their living, seems to be the earliest mention of the later system of benefices.

Population
Its inhabitants are called Agathois.

Architecture
Agde is known for the distinctive black basalt used in local buildings, for example the cathedral of Saint Stephen, built in the twelfth century to replace a 9th-century Carolingian edifice built on the foundations of a fifth-century Roman church. Bishop Guillaume fortified the cathedral's precincts and provided it with a 35-meter donjon (keep). The Romanesque cloister of the cathedral was demolished in 1857.