\b0 This small city has retained its walls from the fifteenth century, with their ten towers and four
gates. One of the latter, Porte Saint-Michel, is a small fortress in itself. It rises above a region of salt marshes on which the city has built its fortune, through the activity of the \i ôpaludiers,ö\i0 who knew how to use the action of the wind and
the sun to evaporate the seawater that they trapped in small pans. The crystals of salt were then collected, generally every other day, during the \i ôsaunaisonö\i0 which lasted from June to September.\par
