"By the road, Aigues-Mortes is located at 35 km approximately of Nimes (Gard main city) and 30 km of Montpellier (Herault main city). The communal territory is composed of part of the wet plain and ponds of the Small Camargue. It is separated from the Gulf of Lions (Mediterranea) by the commune of the Grau-du-Roi. Acute-dead is however connected to the sea by the channel of the Grau-du-roi. History The name of Aigues-Mortes comes from the marshes and the ponds called Dead Water (Aquae Mortuae) which extended around the village. The inhabitants lived fishing, hunting and manufacture of the salt produced in various small salt-water marshes in edge of sea. The area was under the domination of the monks of the Abbey of Chant. In 1240, Saint-Louis got interrested in the geographical position which this small village represented. It indeed wished to obtain an access to the Mediterranean. It obtained monks of the Abbey the city and the grounds neighbourhood by exchange of properties. It profited thus from gabelle, taxes taken on the production of salt. It built a road between the marshes and builds the Carbonnière Tower there to be used as turn of guet and to protect the access to the city. It built then the Tower of Constancy to shelter its garrison. In 1272, the son and successor of St Louis, Philippe the Bold one, ordered the creation of an enclosure of ramparts around the city. Work will be completed only 30 years later. It is from there that Saint-Louis left by twice for the Crusades: the seventh crusade in 1248 and the eighth crusade in 1270 for Tunis where he died of the plague. - 1270 wrongly constitute for many historians the last stage of a committed process at the end of the XI ème century. The judgement is hasty because the transfer of cross or mercenaries starting from the port the Acute dead ones continued. The ordinance given in 1275 to the Guillaume knight of Roussillon by Philippe III the Bold one and the pope Gregoire X after the council of Lyon of 1274 as a reinforcement to St Jean d' Acre in the East, shows that the maritime activity always perdurait there for a ninth crusade which will never take place. (ordinance of Guillaume of Roussillon - Roger the nobility of France to the crusades). This historical fact (of 1270) rises the popular belief, wanting that the sea reaches Aigues-Mortes at that time. In fact (the studies of engineer Charles Leon Dombre confirm it), the whole of the port of Aigues-Mortes, included/understood the port itself which was in the pond of Marette, the Channel-Viel and the Grau-Louis, the Channel-Viel being the channel of access to the sea. It is roughly on the Grau-Louis that the Large-Mound is built today. In 1893 it was the theatre of a conflict between Italian and French workmen working in the saline ones of Peccais which was transformed into a true slaughter with nine died and a hundred on wounded Italian side (Cfr. Enzo Barnabà, the blood of the marshes, Marseilles, 1993).