The finest view of the old town is from the west, as you come in from Carcassonne: crossing the willow-lined River Orb by the Pont-Neuf, you can look upstream at the sturdy arches of the Pont-Vieux, above which rises a steep-banked hill crowned by the Cathédrale St-Nazaire, resembling a castle more than a church with its crenellated towers. The best approach to the cathedral is up the medieval lanes at the end of Pont-Vieux, rue Canterelles and passage Canterellettes. Its architecture is mainly Gothic, the original building having been burnt in 1209 during the sacking of Béziers, when Armand Amaury's crusaders massacred some seven thousand people at the church of the Madeleine for refusing to hand over about twenty Cathars. "Kill them all," the pious abbot is said to have ordered, "God will recognize his own!"From the top of the cathedral tower, there's a superb view out across the vine-dominated surrounding landscape. Next door, you can wander through the ancient cloister (daily: May–Sept 10am–7pm; Oct–April 10am–noon & 2–5pm; free) and out into the shady bishop's garden overlooking the river. In the adjacent place de la Révolution, a monument commemorates the people who died resisting Napoléon III's coup d'état in 1851 and their leader, Mayor Casimir Péret, who was shipped off to Cayenne where he drowned in a Papillon-style escape attempt. Also on the square, the Hôtel Fabrégat houses a Musée des Beaux-Arts (Tues–Fri 9am–noon & 2–6pm; €2.29), which, apart from an interesting collection of Greek Cycladic vases, won't keep you long. Nearby, Hôtel Fayet, at 9 rue Capus (same hours and ticket), has been pressed into service as an annexe to the museum, though it's as much of interest for its period interiors as its collection of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art and works by local sculptor, Jean-Antoine Injalbert. The city's other museum, the Musée du Biterrois, in the old St-Jacques barracks on avenue de la Marne near the train station (Tues–Sun: late-June to late-Sept 9am–7pm; rest of year 9am–noon & 2–6pm; €2.27), displays a variety of entertaining exhibits, ranging from Greek amphorae and nineteenth-century door knockers to distilling manuals, clogs and winepresses. Away from the medieval streets round the cathedral, the centre of life in Béziers is the allées Paul-Riquet, a broad, leafy esplanade lined with cafés, crêpes stalls, restaurants, banks and shops; it's named after the seventeenth-century tax collector who lost health and fortune in his obsession with building the Canal du Midi to join the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Laid out in the last century, the allées runs from an elaborate nineteenth-century theatre on place de la Victoire to the gorgeous little park of the Plateau des Poètes, whose ponds, palms and lime trees were laid out in the so-called English manner by the man who created the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.
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