Narbonne describes itself as Rome's first daughter outside Italy. Most of southern France was once the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis with, as the name implies, Narbonne as its administrative centre, writes Séamus Martin.
Cities such as Nimes, with its impressive Roman arena and wonderfully preserved temple, the Maison Carrée, were under Narbonne's sway.
But the sea took its revenge on what was the busiest Roman port of the region: it retreated from Narbonne. The harbour dried up. The one-time island of La Clape became instead a mountain barrier between the city and the Mediterranean.
Narbonne's prestige declined and it became a sleepy town apparently destined for provincial torpor. It did, however, retain high ecclesiastical status, and it was the last Archbishop of Narbonne and Primate of France who began the revival which led to its current thriving status as the largest city in the département of the Aude, bigger than the regional capital of Carcassonne.
Nowadays its mediaeval town square, through which the ancient Via Domitia once led to Rome, is thronged with summer tourists. The Canal de la Robine, which bisects the town centre, is packed with touring barges mainly from the UK and the Low Countries and Les Halles de Narbonne, the indoor food market on the right bank of the canal, has consistently been voted the best in France.
Here on Sundays le tout Narbonne turns up to take aperitifs at the market's little bars and marvel at the wealth of produce on view. The vignerons of La Clape offer their wines for tasting. Butchers' stalls specialise in different meats. Some display the duck breasts that are central to the region's culinary tradition as well as fatted geese and chickens of various sizes and breeds. Others show off wonderfully marbled cuts of beef for roasting and steaks for the grill and lamb from the nearby salt marshes. Others still, and I walk swiftly past these, are devoted to bright red slabs of horsemeat.
France's great fortune in having coasts on both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean is reflected in its vast array of fish. Mountains of chestnuts and artichokes adorn the vegetable outlets and, harking back to the city's foundation, two large stalls boast of their "gastronomie italienne".
Just outside Les Halles, overlooking the banks of the canal, stands a monument to the man who turned Narbonne's fortunes round in 1760. Bewigged and dressed in the clerical garb of his time with the Cross of Languedoc hung from his shoulders, he watches over the prosperity he helped create. The inscription reads: "Arthur Richard Dillon. Archevêque de Narbonne 1721-1763-1806." The dates refer to his birth, his elevation to the archbishopric and his death, though other sources give the year of his death as 1807.
The fifth son of an Irish general in the French army, Arthur Dillon was more than an archbishop. He also held the position of President of the Estates General, which made him the effective viceroy of Languedoc, the largest province in France, from which post immense revenues accrued.
His brother James had commanded the Irish Brigade in its important role in routing the British and other Germanic armies at Fontenoy in 1745; he died from wounds received in the battle. Louis XV, who had seen him fight bravely, is said to have rewarded the family by promoting Arthur, then a simple curate, to become vicar-general of Pontoise. He later became Bishop of Evreux and Archbishop of Toulouse.
By the time he took over in Narbonne he had become a very powerful man but he was something of a spendthrift, squandering his money on worldly pursuits - especially hunting, which was legally forbidden to the clergy. "You hunt too much," Louis XV is reported to have told him. "How can you prohibit your curates from hunting if you pass your life in setting them such an example?"
Dillon's reply betrayed the arrogance of the aristocracy of his day. "Sire," he said, "for my curates the chase is a fault. For myself it's the fault of my ancestors."
For all his faults Narbonne and also its small French Protestant community owe him much. As President of the Assembly of the Clergy in 1788 he was instrumental in securing the recognition of Protestant marriages in France.
In 1760 his political clout ensured that Narbonne was finally connected to that miracle of 17th-century engineering, the Canal du Midi which links the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean. In the original plan Narbonne was bypassed and the canal went directly to Beziers, the home town of its designer Pierre-Paul Riquet.
Dillon's intervention to link Narbonne with the canal saw the town begin to prosper again and in recognition of its debt to its Irish Archbishop the city erected his bust and placed it on the Quai Dillon.
Dillon fared badly at the end of his life. A devoted royalist, he left, with large numbers of the aristocracy, after the revolution for Koblenz in Germany and then moved to London, where he died in embittered exile, still defending the defunct archdiocese of Narbonne against the concordat of Pius VII which had suppressed his see.