Toulouse is Airbus, Bordeaux is vineyards and wine, Marseille is Provence and Montpellier?
For Montpellier, it is impossible not to mention a name.
This name is that of the shady Georges Frêche.
It was he, the visionary Mayor from 1977 to 2004, the President of the Languedoc-Roussillon Region who shaped the city of today.
The Languedoc, it was by the will of General de Gaulle .
La Grande-Motte or Cap d'Agde, a pleasant holiday region and it is to Georges Frêche that we owe the identity of Montpellier in the 21st century.
Montpellier is gifted because it combines the art of living and economic activity.
A few steps from the Place de la Comédie, it is the Polygone, the large shopping centre that completes the commercial area of old Montpellier.
A little further is Antigone, this district born from the will of the emblematic Mayor and which was widely contested.
It is to the Catalan architect Ricardo Boffil that we owe this district which reminds the Roman architecture.
Georges Frêche's last pirouette or genius idea, before leaving the world, was to have giant statues installed there in homage to the "great men": Mao, Churchill or General de Gaulle.
The statues will have been as controversial as the Antigone project was.
Since the creation of the Occitanie Region, Montpellier has lost the first regional rank to Toulouse.
Toulouse, birthplace of Georges Frêche...
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