History & Civilization
The site has been occupied since Neolithic times, before the influx of Celts. Roman Betarra was on the road that linked Provence with Iberia. The Romans re-founded the city as a new colony for veterans in 36/35 BC and called it Colonia Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum. Stones from the Roman amphitheater were used to construct the city wall during the 3rd century.
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White wine was exported to Rome. Two dolia discovered in an excavation near Rome are marked, one "I am a wine from Baeterrae and I am five years old," the other simply "white wine of Baeterrae". The city was occupied by Moors between 720 and 752.
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During the 10th through 12th centuries Beziers was the center of a Viscountship of Beziers. The viscounts ruled most of the coastal plain around the city, including also the city of Agde. They also controlled the major east-west route through Languedoc, roughly following the old Roman Via Domitia, with the two key bridges over the Orb at Beziers and over the Herault at Saint-Thibery.
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After the death of viscount William around 990, the viscountcy passed to his daughter Garsendis and her husband, count Raimond-Roger of Carcassonne. It was then ruled by their son Peter-Raimond and his son Roger, both of whom were also count of Carcassonne.
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Roger died without children and Beziers passed to his sister Ermengard and her husband Raimond-Bertrand Trencavel. The Trencavels were to rule for the next 142 years, until the Albigensian Crusade authorized by Pope Innocent III.
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In the repression following Louis Napoleon’s coup d’etat in 1851, troops fired on and killed Republican protesters in Beziers. Others were condemned to death or transported to Guyana, including a former mayor who died at sea attempting to escape from there. In the Place de la Revolution a plaque and a monument by Jean Antoine Injalbert commemorates these events.