Summit-level canal with reservoir feed
Canal de cumbre alimentado por embalse (Canal du Midi)
- Date
- 1666-1681 · confidence high
- Place
- Toulouse-Sète (Naurouze), France
- Credited to
- Pierre-Paul Riquet; funded by Colbert and Louis XIV
- People
- 👤 Luis XIV1638–1715👤 Pierre-Paul Riquet1609–1680
- Field
- Movement
What it is
A 240 km canal between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean with 91 locks, a summit reservoir (Saint-Ferréol), aqueducts and the first canal tunnel (Malpas). The greatest civil engineering work of the early modern period.
What it led to
- A model for summit-level canals in the Industrial Revolution
- State mercantilism and public infrastructure
- The French school of engineering (Ponts et Chaussées, 1747)
Built on
- Pound lock with mitre gates1497
- Canal de Briare (1642)
- Topographic levelling
Made possible
- Industrial canal (Bridgewater Canal)1761
- 18th-century English canals
- Canal tunnels
- Large earth dams