# Aigues-Mortes and the Pink Salt — The South of France
> A walled town a king built to reach the sea, ramparts you can walk end to end, and the salt lagoons that turn pink at the edge of the Camargue.

*Source : https://the-south-of-france.com/en/camargue/aigues-mortes-salt/*

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By **The Editors** — _Aigues-Mortes, Gard_

Spring 20268 min read Share LinkMail

Aigues-Mortes rises from the flat marsh of the western Camargue, a complete ring of medieval walls standing alone on the plain. **Louis IX** — Saint Louis — built the port here in the thirteenth century to give the kingdom of France its own door to the Mediterranean, and twice sailed from it for the Crusades. The sea has since retreated; the walls remain.

## I. The walls Saint Louis built

You can walk the ramparts the whole way round, a circuit of towers and curtain wall above the rooftops. The great **Tour de Constance** anchors one corner — a lighthouse, a keep, and later a prison. Inside the walls the town is a tight grid of lanes around the **Place Saint-Louis**, where the king stands in stone among the plane trees.

“The town has not moved in seven centuries; only the sea has changed its mind.”

From the notebook

![A medieval tower above still water](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1584617206487-e6645cf9ff13?fm=jpg&q=74&w=1400&auto=format&fit=crop)

The Tour de Constance — built to guard a port the sea has since abandoned.

## II. The salt that turns the water pink

East of the walls stretch the **Salins du Midi**, lagoons still worked for salt as they have been since antiquity. In late summer the shallow water turns rose-pink — the work of a microscopic algae, _Dunaliella salina_ — and the harvested salt is heaped into a gleaming white mountain, the **camelle**. Flamingos wade the edges, the same colour as the water.

![Pink salt lagoons under a wide sky](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1625635765295-2c4c8659fd09?fm=jpg&q=76&w=2400&auto=format&fit=crop)

The salt pans at the day’s end — the water rose-pink, the salt mountain catching the last light.

## III. The edge of the Camargue

Beyond the salt the true **Camargue** begins — white horses, black bulls, and the **gardians** who herd them on horseback. The little fishing port of **Le Grau-du-Roi** lies a few kilometres south, where the Rhône’s western arm finally meets the sea it took Saint Louis a fortified town to reach.

The Practical Carnet · Carnet pratique

### Plan the _visit_

Getting there

Nîmes or Montpellier, about 40 min by car; in summer a little tourist train runs from **Le Grau-du-Roi**.

When to go

Late summer for the deepest pink in the lagoons; spring for the flamingos and the birds.

Where to stay

**Mas de Peint**, deeper in the Camargue — a working manade with rooms, north toward Le Sambuc.

Read next

[The Camargue, horses, salt and big skies](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/camargue/camargue-guide/)

E

About the Author · L’auteur

#### Élise Marchand

Travel Editor — based in Marseille

Élise has been driving the back roads of the Midi for the journal since its first issue. She pays for her own rooms and her own lunches — and only writes about the places she would return to.

[More by Élise Marchand — voir ses articles](https://the-south-of-france.com/en/journal/)

Continue reading · À lire ensuite

### More from the _South_

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Camargue

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The Table

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