Buying in France:Prices in Pezénas in the Languedoc are about a third lower than in Provençe, and it is only half-an-hour from the Med at Cap d'Agde. But the town is still a well-kept secret. Alva MacSherryexplores.
Pézenas is having a quiet century. The winding, cobbled streets of its old quarter are hushed, the air filled with cooking smells rather than the rattle of carts and the scurrying of civil servants, all of which belong to another age.
Half an hour away, the Mediterranean laps onto sandy beaches sculpted by bulldozers, but Pézenas, one of the hidden jewels of the Herault in the south of France, is in another world, its face turned firmly to the past, its streets in a permanent doze.
Built largely between the 16th and 18th centuries, and undisturbed by much since, the old town is a circle within the round shape of nowadays Pézenas, a similarly quiet, neat town with a population of 7,000.
This is a town that cradles its past, shows it off to visitors, dotes on it with all the tenderness of an elderly mother with her babe. If passéisme were a criminal offence, then most of the population of Pézenas would have been sent down long ago for rampant nostalgia.
There is a lot to dream about. The playwright Molière wrote his best works here in the mid-17th century, but even before that huge, jubilant fairs filled these narrow, high-sided streets.
In medieval times, at festivals marking the major religious feasts, merchants from all over the south of France came here to trade spices, materials and money: above all, they came to trade in "petits draps" - lace and needlework - produced in winter by peasants in the winter-bound foothills of the Pyrenees and the Massif Centrale.
Situated on the banks of the river Peyne, between Béziers and Montpellier, the site of Pézenas has been occupied on and off since the Iron Age, since it is on several important trade routes.
The Greeks, the Romans and several French kingdoms had settlements here, but the town had no political influence until the end of the 17th century, when the Montmorencys, then rulers of Languedoc, made Pézenas their seat.
The town enjoyed 32 years of political significance, but the flurry of activity was soon over. The Canal du Midi never came this way and when the rail link between Sête and Bordeaux was built, the line ran along the coast, ignoring inland towns like Pézenas. All was quiet for a long, long time.
And maybe it's all for the best, in a country that welcomes more than 75 million tourists a year. For the old Pézenas has never been swallowed by the new - changed a little, but not much.
What visitors find is an intact walled town built in yellow and white stone, embracing a mixture of buildings from the 16th century onwards.
Some are fine edifices, others simply houses, family homes and businesses for hundreds of years. It's a higgledy-piggledy arrangement that means you never know quite what you're looking at.
Most renovated buildings are in apartments - apartments are relatively rare in the area in general - but unremarkable garage doors may open to reveal beautiful, private courtyards and tiny gardens behind.
There are also properties available in Pézenas which need partial or complete renovation, and work on such buildings should qualify for tax relief in France.
In the heart of Pézenas, a four-bedroom apartment in an 18th-century building was for sale recently for around €230,000; halfway between Pézenas and Beziers, in the wine-growing village of Servian, a three-bed semi-detached house built at the beginning of the 12th century was on the market earlier this year for €176,000.
Pass through stone arches from the old town to the new and you will find more recent history at your fingertips in the dozens of antique and bric-a-brac shops for which Pézenas is also known. The town is the regional capital for antiques and memorabilia, a trade boosted by the number of immigrants to the area, notably Dutch, German and English.
Among the annual highlights are the town's antiques fairs in May and October, where 100 traders line the RN113, the road to Montpellier. Just as in Pézenas's glory days, they come from all over the Languedoc, Spain and even Italy.
Pézenas often advertises itself as a base to explore the region, striking a typically self-effacing tone. It is an easy half-hour drive from the Mediterranean at Agde, an hour's drive from the airport at Montpellier and slightly more from those at Carcassonne. And indeed, it is a great base for anyone looking to buy in the area.
The many small, pretty towns around the Herault offer attractive property investments, as well as attractive places to live, and for those who prefer to avoid historic plumbing there are plenty of new developments of villas and town houses in the area.
The Herault attracts more than 1,000 newcomers a month - including growing numbers of downsizing young foreigners.
A survey in the French magazine l'Express last year put the Herault at second nicest of France's 95 departments.
House prices are generally recognised to be about 35 per cent cheaper than in other parts of Provençe, and the climate and landscape are very similar.
Not long ago we stayed in a house in the old quarter of Pézenas, a typical tall, thin, modest home two rooms deep, one room wide. The rooms at the back, those built into the town ramparts, had originally been another house, so there were a few steps up on every floor.
The bedrooms were timeless, small and pleasant, the light soft through old glass. And every morning, we trooped n to breakfast down a stone spiral staircase.
Like most places in France, Pézenas has its local delicacy. This is a little, bobbin-shaped pastry filled with minced lamb and glacé fruit. If that sounds a little familiar, that's because it is the ancestor of our Christmas mince pie, introduced by Clive of India when he stayed in Pézenas in the mid-18th century.
Our mince pie may be utterly changed, but the Pézenas version is true to the original recipe after more than 200 years. How appropriate.
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