Industrial Vision:

Established in 1673 by Pierre Baille, a Clermont-l’Hérault cloth merchant, Villeneuvette was designed as a hydraulic-powered textile factory leveraging the Dourbie River’s water for fulling mills and dye works. In 1677, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister, elevated it to a "Manufacture Royale" to boost France’s textile industry and compete with Dutch and English fabrics

The village’s aqueduct bridge (nicknamed Pont de l'Amour) had a hilarious medieval superstition: couples had to cross the narrow bridge hand-in-hand while kissing at the center—without falling into the water below. Success meant marriage within a year, but failure doomed the relationship. Locals joke that the real test was surviving the walk back after too much wine from the nearby vineyards

Locals reenact the "Love Bridge" challenge—with inflatable safety rafts now mandatory.

Click on any image for enlarged image and navigation views.