Pierre-Paul Riquet, a French civil engineer, was born in either 1604 or 1609. Riquet became quite rich as a fermier général (tax collector) in southeastern France, but he used his wealth to finance the greatest engineering project of the 17th century, the building of a canal that connected the Mediterranean Sea to Toulouse, which sat on a navigable river, the Garonne, that ran to the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean.
Called the Languedoc Canal, it was 150 miles long and had to cross a watershed at an altitude of 625 feet. We link here to a modern map of the region, with the Languedoc Canal (here labeled the Canal du Midi, explanation below) marked in blue. Begun in 1667, the Canal opened for traffic on May 20, 1681.
he died in 1680
Text lifted from the Linda Hall Library More information about this rich civil engineer at the Canal Du Midi website
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