Atlas shrugged

Injalbert also designed the Fontaine du Titan in The Plateau des Poètes (1867), a vast park laid out in 1867 in the English style that connects the city on top of the hill with the railway station at the bottom. OK, it isn't Titan, it is Atlas, who was one of the Titans, but they are over foreign myths in these parts.

Nowadays the plundering is more camouflaged. Beziers scores in the top percentiles in France for the number of unemployed and the lowest income per capita. It also scores highly for the number of people paying the Impôt de solidarité sur la fortune or ISF. This was an annual direct wealth tax on those French residents having assets in excess of €1,300,000 which was substituted in September, at the behest of the rich, by an Impôt sur la fortune immobilière (IFI) a tax on real estate which ignores all other financial assets. They made their money from wine, which they made on the land they took from the locals but Atlas didn't care.

Beziers also scored highly on the number of non-resident householders, most of whom live in Paris or Geneva. But their houses make nice photos.Read more