The Camargue: Wild Heart of the Delta

The Rhône delta, known as the Camargue, creates one of Europe's most important wetlands where France's mightiest river meets the Mediterranean. This triangular expanse of marshes, lagoons, and salt flats supports an ecosystem unique in Western Europe, where pink flamingos wade through shallow waters, black bulls graze on salt meadows, and white horses gallop along endless beaches.

The Camargue exists in constant flux, shaped by the competing forces of river and sea. The Rhône deposits 20 million cubic meters of sediment annually, building land that Mediterranean storms erode. Human intervention—dikes, drainage channels, irrigation systems—has attempted to stabilize this dynamic landscape since Roman times, creating a delicate balance between wild nature and human use.

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the Camargue's only seaside town, occupies a special place in European culture. According to legend, this is where Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome, and Mary Jacobe landed after fleeing Palestine, accompanied by Sarah, patron saint of the Roma people. Every May, Roma from across Europe converge here for a pilgrimage that transforms the quiet town into a festival of music, horses, and devotion. The fortified church, built to withstand both pirates and floods, rises like a ship from the flat landscape, its roof offering panoramic views over an amphibious world.

The gardians, the Camargue's cowboys, maintain traditions dating back centuries. These horsemen manage the native black bulls (actually dark brown) raised for the course camarguaise, a form of bullfighting where the animal survives and often becomes a local celebrity. The gardian culture, with its distinctive wide-brimmed hats and traditional cabanes (thatched huts), represents one of Europe's last working cowboy traditions, adapted to a landscape where pastures flood with salt water and horses must swim between grazing grounds.

Salt production has shaped the Camargue for millennia. The salins (salt pans) around Aigues-Mortes cover thousands of hectares, their geometric basins progressing from blue to pink to white as seawater evaporates under the Mediterranean sun. The pink color comes from microscopic algae that thrive in hypersaline conditions—the same algae that, consumed by brine shrimp, give flamingos their distinctive color. This industrial-scale salt production coexists with nature conservation, the shallow pans providing habitat for countless birds.