Mazamet
Commune in Occitania, France
Mazamet (French pronunciation: [mazamet]; Languedocien: Masamet) is a commune in the Tarn department in southern France.
It is the second-largest component of the Castres-Mazamet metropolitan area.
01Geography
Mazamet is situated on the northern slope of the Montagne Noire and on the Arnette, a small tributary of the Thoré, which forms the commune's northern border.
02Population
| Year | Pop. | ±% p.a. |
|---|---|---|
| 1968 | 16,171 | , |
| 1975 | 14,440 | −1.60% |
| 1982 | 12,840 | −1.66% |
| 1990 | 11,481 | −1.39% |
| 1999 | 10,544 | −0.94% |
| 2007 | 10,055 | −0.59% |
| 2012 | 10,093 | +0.08% |
| 2017 | 10,013 | −0.16% |
| 2023 | 10,085 | +0.12% |
| Source: INSEE | ||
03Economy
The town made its wealth during the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was the world center of the wool industry. At its height, the town imported more than 100,000 tonnes of wool annually from the Southern Hemisphere. After processing, numerous establishments were involved in wool-spinning and in the manufacture of leather goods, gloves, blankets, hosiery and clothing for the troops. Mazamet was the biggest center of the wool pulling industry in Europe. In 1906, 95% of French workers in the industry were employed in Tarn. While the vast majority of Mazamet's wool industry ended in the early 1990s, the town still has a residual high-end leather industry with leather being purchased by a number of Paris & London fashion houses.
Today, Mazamet is known for tourism, thanks to its natural setting at the foothills of the Montagne Noire mountain range and being close to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Albi, Carcassonne and the Canal du Midi.
The town has a 65 km (40 mi) cycle path, plus numerous other cycling + walking routes.
04Notable people
- Pierre Capretz, developer of the French in Action series for teaching French, was born in Mazamet in 1925.
- Maurice Euzennat (1926-2004), historian and archaeologist, died in Mazamet
- Laurent Jalabert, Road bicycle racing professional was born here.
- Nicolas Jalabert, Road bicycle racing professional was born here.
- Thomas Ramos, French rugby union professional, was born in Mazamet in 1995.
- Pierre Sancan, pianist and composer, was born in Mazamet in 1916.
- Jean-Michel Vernhes, public servant, was born in Mazamet in 1950.
05Mazamet, ville morte in 1973
In May 1973, a national road safety awareness campaign that took place on May 17, 1973 in Mazamet, called "Mazamet, ville morte" ("Mazamet, dead city"). The 16,610 inhabitants of the city laid down on the streets for a few minutes to symbolize the 16,500 people killed in road accidents in France the previous year
06Tour de France
Mazamet was the start for Stage 14 in the 2007 Tour de France, finishing on the top of Plateau de Beille. The stage was won by Alberto Contador, who later went on to win the Tour. In 2018, Mazamet welcomed the race once again as it passed through on route to Carcassonne.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Mazamet”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Mazamet - Vue générale.jpg by Fabricio Cardenas, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Map commune FR insee code 81163.png by Map data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, CC-BY-SA Legend • Shape files infrastructure: railway, highways, water: all originally by OpenStreetMap contributors. Status december 2011 • Label and Insee code commune: from Geofla (note that commune boundaries are also available under free license at geofla, but not near acceptable quality due to extreme simplification!) • Data for exact commune* and department boundaries: derived via osm download geofabrik.de and osm2pgsql, OpenStreetMap contributors. • Data for landuse: OSM / Corine land cover, 2006 ([1]) • Mentioned sources combined and exported for each commune using a script by Michiel1972 *note: shown commune boundaries are from OSM dump May 2012; at that time about 90% complete, CC BY 2.0
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